


the one where stanley uris pulls a casper the friendly ghost

by NoodleFloozy



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Brief Mention of Suicide, Don and Adrian, I'm God now, Reddie, and thats his whole thing in chapter 2, bev and ben are also in love but its kind of in the background, but its okay!!!, cuz this is a fix-it, cuz yanno stan, eddie and richie are in love, i guess theres a little bit of gore mention but like not really, i was half asleep when i wrote this, its mostly just hey theres blood, mentions of the cosmic turtle, stan also loves his wife, stan is sassy and soft and we love him, stan keeps his promise, stan loves all his friends, stan wishes eddie and richie would stop being stupid and kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-01 06:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoodleFloozy/pseuds/NoodleFloozy
Summary: "Next time we just go with regular scary!" Eddie yells as they run away."Next time?" Richie shrieks.They're idiots.Stan loves them.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips, Don Hagarty/Adrian Mellon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 16
Kudos: 151





	1. the one with the chinese restaurant and the house on neibolt

**Author's Note:**

> Before you read this just know that I wrote this between doing homework while sleep deprived and then immediately posted it. It is unedited, raw, and self indulgent. Forgive the quality and just enjoy Stan being soft.
> 
> With that being said, I may go back and edit and add to it later, hence the whole chapter 1/? thing.
> 
> **Edit 12/7/19: so yeah I totally came back and added to it and this is going Somewhere, I have plans. Stay tuned if you're interested in a whole lot of resurrection and fluff.

They're sitting at a big table at the Jade of the Orient, and everything feels familiar and different all at once. They're all older, Bev's hair is longer, Mike looks tired. Ben is hot, Bill is famous and so is Richie, and Eddie has a wedding band on his finger. But despite the decades that they'd forgotten to know each other, being together still feels right and easy in ways most things in life don't. Stan, leaning against the back of Richie's chair, only feels a little bit left out. 

He's forfeited the right to truly partake in this reunion, after all, has left his body in his bathtub in the hope it might make it easier for the Losers to survive without him. After Mike's call he'd spent hours trying to convince himself that if he faced It once and survived he could do it again, but he was still states away from Derry, sitting in his living room in Atlanta and trying not to make Patty worry, and fear was still closing coldly around his heart. He tries not to think of his wife opening the bathroom door. He hadn't stayed to see it happen, he couldn't take her grief. 

He had Eddie on his side that summer all those years ago, always clutching at his inhaler and yelling about how they were _kids_ and they should be having _fun_, and that camaraderie in cowardice had been comforting. But deep down, Stan always knew that Eddie was braver than him. The proof was in the way he ran down closer than the rest of them, making himself an easier target and getting his shoes wet, during the rock fight with Bowers, the way he went into Neibolt with Bill and Richie with a stiff upper lip the day he broke his arm, the way he stood up to his mother and climbed down that rope into the caverns with his arm in a cast, the way he kicked It in the face with a manic scream of _"I'm gonna kill you!"_ when the rest of them were scrambling for weapons. The proof is in the fact that he is sitting there, alive and committed, at that table in the Jade of the Orient and that Stanley is not. 

Richie does a shot without using his hands - a _blowjob_ shot, he informs everyone, which Stan finds infuriating - and then lets the shot glass clatter to the table. He fixes Eddie with a look, the same look he'd fixed him with every day when they were kids - all mischief, but with a twinkle in his eye because Eddie is his _favorite_ person to bother (and favorite person in _general_, Stan thinks) - and Eddie gets his wine glass in a death grip and takes a sip. He knows what's coming just as well as any of the rest of them, and he's ready. He's _been_ ready since he got over the shock of seeing everyone again and suddenly remembering who they were, since everyone shook it off and started talking like friends do. Stanley has watched them go through this a million times, and even though it's been decades and he forgot for most of those years, he feels that old irritation and frustration growing in his belly, that desire to interfere. He's never seen Richie and Eddie happier than when they're each being a thorn in the other's side. Too bad he's not exactly corporeal, or he may actually do something this time. Everyone would be better off, maybe even Eddie's wife. 

Richie smirks and opens his mouth - that alone stokes the fire already burning in Eddie's eyes, and Stan rolls is eyes - and says, "So wait, Eddie. You got married?" 

Eddie points his glass in Richie's direction and the wine almost sloshes over the rim. "Yeah, why's that so fuckin' funny, dickwad?" 

"What, like to a woman?" 

Richie is fighting to keep a grin off his face, but Stan, who has moved to Mike's side and has his chin propped on the oblivious man's shoulder, can see the trepidation in his eyes. Eddie looks stricken for a fraction of a second before he replaces it with that same exaggerated, indignant rage he'd always presented as a child. "Fuck you, bro," he says, and takes another sip of wine. 

Richie, looking absolutely tickled, hollers, _"Fuck you!"_

Bill, ever the mediator - or instigator, Stan thinks - says, "What about you, Rich? You married?" 

Richie says yes, and Bev lets out a peal of bell-like laughter and calls bullshit. "No, I got married!" Richie looks defensive, but Stan knows better. "You didn't know I got married?" 

Eddie puts his glass down on the table and looks surprisingly genuine when he responds, "No!" For only a moment, he looks troubled. Stan might feel bad for him, if he weren't such an idiot. Eddie knows better than to believe anything Richie says in moments like these, but he supposes if he were in his place, if he were that _infuriatingly stupid_, he may react the same. After all, Richie isn't afraid, at least not in the same ways Eddie is. Richie would take authenticity over comfort any day. And Eddie knows - he _knows_ \- that if Richie got married, it would be for love and nothing less. 

Stan leaves Mike's side and drifts toward Bill, who snorts his drink out his nose when Richie says to Eddie, "No, yeah, your mother and I are very happy." 

The discussion devolves further - Eddie shrieks about how that is so not funny, and Richie falls into a Jabba the Hut impression at Sonia Kaspbrak's expense - but it eventually comes to a serious juncture when they inevitably realize that there are six full seats while one sits empty and, never mind the horrifying creatures that sprout from their fortune cookies only a few moments later, Stanley circles the table and brushes his fingers over his friends' shoulders, their cheeks, their hair, and apologizes for what he's done, but assures them that he's here and he won't leave. 

They can't hear him, but he'll keep this promise anyway. 

********** 

Later, he stands with them on the front walk of the house on Neibolt. Bill just tried to be a martyr and go in alone, which is typical, but he probably knew when he tried to give them an out that none of them would take it. Stan thinks he'd be tempted, if what was down there could still hurt him. But just like when they were kids, even if It could, once he'd made it that far he wouldn't have abandoned them. He just might have been too afraid and gotten them killed. 

"Does someone want to say something?" Eddie says, shifting his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. 

"Richie said it best when we were here last," says Bill, fearless Bill, and Richie meets his gaze with a baffled look. 

"I did?" And at Bill's nod he quotes, _"I don't want to die?"_

"Not that." 

"That you're lucky we're not measuring dicks?" 

"No." 

Richie thinks on it for a moment and then offers, "Let's kill this fuckin' clown?" 

Bill smiles. "Yeah." 

Richie's returning smile is uneasy, but he steels himself. "Let's kill this fuckin' clown." 

They start shuffling toward the porch, and Eddie is clearly dreading this. Stan sidles up beside him, bumping their shoulders together. Eddie doesn't react, let alone stumble from the weight knocking into him. 

"You can do this, Eddie." Stan says anyway. "You're the bravest one of us." 

********** 

Inside, Stan is reminded that It's tactics are as tasteless as ever. 

He scowls as he watches the head of his preteen self talk and then sprout spider legs before lunging to attack his friends. He finds it a bit insulting, but on the same token he's mad that It can use him against the Losers this way. 

On the other side of the door that slammed shut, Mike is holding a screaming Ben up as his stomach gets carved by an invisible force - "home at last," it says, in big bloody letters; Stan thinks there are much wittier things to write, but he's not the murder clown - but Bev's got him covered. She spots Pennywise in the mirror in front of them and smashes it to pieces. 

Eddie has pressed himself flat against the wall when the little curly-haired monstrosity disappears, and it takes Richie all of five seconds to plant himself in front of him and ask if he's okay. Eddie just shakes his head wordlessly, and Richie doesn't get a chance to say anything else before his attention is drawn upward to the snarling Spider-Stan clinging to the ceiling above him. 

"Oh. There he is," he says, and Stan cringes, just before it drops onto his face and makes him crash to the floor. 

Eddie hyperventilates, Bill grabs at the head and keeps the teeth away from Richie's face but can't get the legs to let go. 

"Eddie! Get the knife!" 

Eddie wheezes a breath, frozen to the spot, and shakes his head again. 

"Dammit, Eddie, get the knife!" 

Stan likes to think that if he could he'd grab the knife and use it just to get Bill to stop yelling, but realistically he thinks he'd be shrinking into the corner next to Eddie. The door crashes open again and Ben, ever the white knight, takes the initiative and stabs the knife into Spider-Stan's skull. 

Stanley can't help but cringe. 

Bill blows up on Eddie, and from his perspective, it's called for. Even Eddie seems to think he deserves it, looking down and muttering that he's sorry. The rest of the Losers are quiet in the background as Richie wipes drool off his face. 

Bill points out that they've already lost Stan, does Eddie want them to lose Richie too? Stan doesn't think that's fair, but he knows Bill as well as he knows Eddie, and he knows he doesn't mean it. He's just trying to keep everyone alive. 

"No I-I don't want Richie…" Stan puts a hand on Eddie's shoulder and squeezes. "I was just scared. Please don't be mad, Bill." 

Eddie sounds desperate and ashamed and _terrified_, and Stanley wishes he could tell him it's alright. 

********** 

When they reach the well and have to climb down, Eddie stops. 

The others are going ahead, and it's best, Stan thinks, that it's Richie who stops with him and not Bill. Although he suspects Bill may have had enough time to soften and feel guilty by then, and Richie would probably give him hell if he hadn't. 

Richie gives Eddie a pep talk in a way only he could, soft-voiced and sincere but still fitting in a joke at Myra's expense and giving a little slap to the open stab wound through Eddie's cheek. 

"You're braver than you think." He says, and Stan approves, because it's what Eddie needs to hear. 

Richie's hand holding Eddie's wrist seems to ease him, if only a little, and he murmurs a sincere _thanks, Rich._

They climb down. 

********** 

Beverly gives Eddie a broken piece of metal fencepost. 

"Take this," she says kindly. She knows he's afraid, but she knows he can do this if he has reason enough to believe. He looks at her with big eyes, imploring, curling his fingers slowly around the rusty metal spike. "It kills monsters," Bev adds. "If you believe it does." 

Stanley, not for the first time, thinks that he loves Beverly Marsh very much. 

********** 

A lot of things happen very quickly after that. They each burn their artifacts. The Ritual of Chüd fails. They all get split up. 

Bev gets drenched in blood and nearly drowns in it, Ben almost gets buried in the clubhouse he built. They pull each other out with the power of love or some bullshit like that, all Stan knows is that for a second he is panicking, thinking they are about to die, and the next Ben is screaming something about the color of Bev's hair and she escapes her bathroom stall and pulls him out of the dirt. 

Mike gets knocked off his feet while they're all running for safety and stays hiding behind a rock where he lands, pinned in the main cavern by It still roaming around him. 

Bill dives into the water and ends up in the basement of his parents' house. He kills Fake Georgie when he starts blaming Bill for his death, and then he kills his preteen self when he does the same thing. It's supposed to be symbolic, Stan thinks. Bill is going to stop blaming himself, and it's about goddamn time. 

Richie and Eddie run down a smaller passageway where the now giant Pennywise can't follow, and come up to the _Very Scary, Scary,_ and _Not Scary At All_ doors. Behind _Very Scary_ they find Betty Ripsom's legs skipping toward them out of a closet, and slam the door. Behind _Not Scary At All_, they fawn over a Pomeranian until it turns into a tentacled monster. 

"Next time we just go with regular scary!" Eddie yells as they run away. 

_ "Next time?"_ Richie shrieks. 

They're idiots. 

Stan loves them. 

********** 

Bill takes a wrong step, and ends up in It's sights. Mike yells his name and lunges, and when he gets trapped in It's claw, everyone stops dead. Bill mouths no like he can't find his voice, and Stan thinks if his heart were still beating, it'd stop right then. 

There's relief, breaths taken, when Richie charges out - _Hey, fuckface!_ \- and distracts It enough to drop Mike. "Yeah, that's right!" He yells when It turns on him. "Let's dance! Yippee-ki-yay, motherfu-" 

The stone he was about to throw clatters to the ground. Richie's jaw is dropped open, arms swinging limply at his sides. The Deadlights shine in his eyes, and as he begins to float Stan feels cold and knows the rest of them do too. He watches helplessly. 

And then, in the silence of nobody else knowing what to do, Stan hears Eddie. 

"If you believe it does," he's saying to himself, white-knuckling the fencepost Bev had given him. He repeats it a couple times, looking between his hands and Richie. It's throat pulsates and the Deadlights pull Richie a little bit closer, and Eddie's eyes blaze. He charges. 

"Beep beep, mother_fucker_!" 

Eddie's throw is perfect. He's barely taken the time to aim, but the makeshift spear sails straight into It's throat and makes It choke, spluttering as It drops Richie. 

Eddie lets out an excited _holy shit_ as It shrinks in on itself. He allows himself only a second to survey his work before he's running for Richie, yelling unintelligible half sentences as he tries to get him to come to. "There he is!" He says when Richie finally looks at him. "Rich, listen - I think I got It, man! I think I really killed It!" 

And Richie is just looking up at him in absolute bewilderment, eyes huge behind his glasses. One of his lenses cracked when he fell. His hands reach up and are halfway to Eddie's face when Eddie lets out a strangled cry of pain, and Richie doesn't register the massive claw that's just stabbed into Eddie's back and burst out his chest like that scene in _Alien_, he's only seeing Eddie's face crumple, seeing a string of blood dripping out of his mouth as he lets out a desperate _Richie?_ and remembering countless times they'd argued about who spat the better loogie into the quarry. But Stan _screams_, and so does Bev. Bill's mouth is frozen open in a silent yell, and Ben and Mike are merely staring like they can't tear their eyes away as Eddie is lifted and swung around by the claw that's been shoved through his body. Horror is slowly dawning on Richie's pale face. 

_"Eddie!"_

Stanley is already beside Eddie when he hits the ground, but Richie is scrambling to his feet and the rest of the Losers follow close behind him. Richie falls to his knees at Eddie's side, fumbles to remove his jacket, holds it to the wound. 

Eddie speaks, but Stan isn't paying attention to much of anything past the growing bloodstain over the jacket Richie is trying to use to stop the bleeding. There's a bit of talking, Mike exclaiming, "All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit!" And then they're forming a new plan while Pennywise scrabbles at the opening to the cave they've entered and sing-song demands that they come out and play. 

It's Eddie who convinces Richie to leave him and join the others, because they're already two down and they need him to finish this. Stan is saying, "Go, go, I'll stay with him," but it falls on deaf ears. 

As it turns out, all they've ever needed to do to defeat It is eliminate the fear, and belittle it into nonexistence. It's so stupidly easy, Stan thinks as he watches them do it, as he yells along regardless of whether or not he's really helping, and watches It shrink before they crush It's heart in their hands. He's trying to keep pressure on Eddie's wound but his hands are useless. So many deaths could have been avoided if only they'd _known_ what to do all those years ago. 

There's only a short moment in the aftermath before Richie is saying "Eddie, Eddie" and leading the rest as he hurries back to their fallen comrade. He's still awake, but barely, and when Richie replaces his hand over the wound Eddie covers it with his own. 

"We did it," Richie's saying. "You did it, Eds. You're gonna be okay, we're gonna get you out of here." 

Eddie's gasping, trying to focus on Richie, but his eyes keep slipping to the spot on his left where Stan is, and Stan feels an ugly kind of hope in his tummy that someone can finally see him. But if Eddie can see him, that means Eddie is dying too. Eddie's out of it, but even he knows Richie's in denial, grasping at straws. He squeezes Richie's hand, skin slick with blood. His eyelids flutter and he looks up at Richie with those big doe eyes that had never once hidden how he felt. "Rich," he breathes. "Gotta tell you something." 

Stan feels hope, and he knows Richie does too by the way he perks up, just a little bit. _Come on, Eddie_, Stan thinks, desperately. _Be brave, be honest. While you still can._

"I fucked your mother." Is what Eddie says, and Richie's face falls but he laughs as he starts to cry. 

"You're an idiot!" Stanley yells, rubbing at his watering eyes, at Eddie. 

Eddie's fading fast, but his eyes flicker to where Stan stands, so upset he's _shaking_, and his eyebrows furrow. He tries to say something but fails, and his eyes flutter closed. 

Richie is still in denial. Ben lays a hand on his shoulder and he shakes it off, but it happens very slowly. Suddenly, his friends are all moving in slow motion, and Stan watches in confusion that grows into fear when they all join Eddie in being completely still. Frozen in the middle of movement. Richie's mouth is open, stuck in the middle of saying _we can still help him_ for the hundredth time. Bev's tears have frozen halfway down her cheeks. Ben is stuck with his muscles flexing, as he'd been starting to haul Richie to his feet, Mike and Bill just behind him and just about to help. 

Stan knows he is physically useless but he still tries to knock Mike over. He should be unsteady, with one foot in the air, halfway through a step, and maybe pushing him forward will make them resume. Mike doesn't budge, and neither does anyone else. Dread is building in Stanley's stomach. Is this a trick? Did It survive, is It still just fucking with them? Is It about to amble around the corner on those spider legs and tear them all to pieces? 

Maybe he's still thirteen years old, maybe he never escaped the sewers that summer. Maybe none of them did. Maybe they're still down there, caught in the Deadlights, floating like Bev did, like all the kids did. Maybe growing up, moving away, forgetting his friends, maybe it was all a trick. Maybe it's still 1989. Was Patty ever real? If she wasn't, he doesn't have to feel guilty for abandoning her. If she wasn't, the best part of his life has been a lie. 

********** 

There's light pouring in from the mouth of the cavern they're in, growing brighter, and Stan charges toward it. "Where are you?" He demands. He's delirious, which maybe shouldn't be a thing for a ghost, but then again he thinks it's kind of fucked up that _ghosts_ are a thing. _"Where are you?"_ He yells again, louder. Nothing seems to be there, but then Pennywise was always good with the eerie silence before a jump scare. 

He never thought he'd be asking Pennywise to show Itself, but then again he supposes he never really thought he'd die in his bathtub and follow his childhood friends around as a ghost, either. He's not afraid anymore. Not for himself, anyway. What else can be done to him now, other than having to watch the other Losers die? 

He made the grand, logical, yet still questionable decision to remove himself from the board in the dangerous game the Losers hadn't realized they were still playing with Pennywise, but now, in an unforeseen turn of events, he's become the only mobile player left. He will do anything, _anything_, to ensure a win for the Losers Club of 1989. 

He's not sure precisely what it is that alerts him to the presence behind him other than the sudden absolute knowledge that it's there. He whirls to face it, and has to shield his eyes from the whitest, brightest light he's ever seen. 

_Stanley Uris._

It's not a voice, so much as words being crammed into his head and his mind forced to comprehend them. It's uncomfortable, and he rubs at his left temple. 

"Uh… Yes?" 

He tries to look up again, find the source of the not-voice, but again has to look away. A part of him wonders if this is what Bev and Richie saw when they looked into the Deadlights, but his entire being is being flooded with an insistent kind of calm. And while it feels incredibly unnatural and he's still ready to fight with everything he's got if he has to, this is entirely the opposite atmosphere that It always created. 

_Stanley Uris_, he hears again, and his fingers find both temples this time. He doesn't know what this is, doesn't know if he believes in it, but it must have power. 

"Can you… can you save Eddie?" He finds himself asking, disregarding everything else. Never mind asking this _thing_ that's so incomprehensible he can't even _look_ at it what it is. It can be anything, it can be God, Beelzebub, or a giant cosmic fucking _turtle_ for all he cares. Whatever it is, it can freeze time. That can't be its only superpower. 

There's a long moment of silence, the light dims just enough to be noticeable and then glares back full force. _Edward Kaspbrak_, it says this time. 

"Yes," Stan says, because he thinks it understands. "Yes, Eddie Kaspbrak." 

_ Stanley Uris?_

It's a question this time, and Stan cocks his head. More thoughts are forced into his skull, and he grits his teeth and holds his head against the pressure. 

He sees a vision of Patty holding a pregnancy test and sitting on the edge of a bathtub that's never been full of his blood as happy tears trail down her face, and he feels his heart clench at what he's taken from himself and from her. 

Patty had brought up the idea of having kids a few months before Mike called from Derry, and Stan had wanted that. They both had. He still does. 

When he opens his eyes again they're wet, and he stares into the blinding light as long as he can stand. "I made a choice. A bad one, but I made it. Eddie was brave, and he came back, and he tried. He doesn't deserve to die." 

_ Only one._

Stan had a feeling that might be the deal, and he only nods solemnly. "Save Eddie." He says again. "Please. He's got a lot of life left to live. If he and Richie can dig their heads out of their asses, maybe it'll be a real life this time." 

It's true. Stan really thinks, if they're just given a little more time, Richie and Eddie will come to terms with themselves. Maybe they forgot each other and how they felt, maybe even forgot learning things about themselves. But the moment they were brought back together they were Richie-and-Eddie again, at each other's throats with the most gentle of attacks, and if they were locked in a room together long enough it'd leave a hickey. 

Stan has a wife. He wishes he could give himself back to her, but he knows who deserves this second chance, and it's not him. 

Looking up into that light, though, Stan has the oddest feeling that he's being laughed at. Not in a condescending way, although he can't help but feel a little offended. It's like he's a child again, and his mother is chuckling at him for putting a "d" at the end of "religion." 

_ Why not both?_

And with that, the light fades. A feeling of bone-deep exhaustion seeps into every fiber of his being, like a sickness pumping through his veins, but you can only feel an ache like that if you're alive. He sucks in a surprised, gasping breath. It almost hurts, like that first breath after sitting at the bottom of the pool for as long as you can. He stretches his fingers, kicks at a rock and watches it actually skitter across the ground. He rakes his hands through his hair and lets out a single, too-loud laugh. 

He's thankful, if a bit off-put. He doesn't know what Patty knows, doesn't know if there's a dead body that used to belong to him still out in Georgia, doesn't know if he has a death certificate and a lot of explaining to do, or even if this new body will last outside the limits of Derry, Maine. But right now he's giddy, and the entire place is starting to crumble, and he really needs to go if he's going to keep the life he's just been given back. He turns and stumbles back to where he left the Losers. 

********** 

They're all scrambling. They're dodging falling rocks and gawking at Eddie's lack of a gaping chest wound, mostly, and Eddie is staring confusedly at Richie, who's hanging off his shoulders and weeping like a widow in a Friday afternoon soap opera. 

When Stan grabs Richie and starts pulling him - and Eddie, since Richie's not letting him go maybe ever - toward the exit, Bev lets out a loud gasp. Honestly, all his friends could star in a really bad Bollywood drama, Stan thinks. And he'd watch it, because he loves them. 

There's a question at the tip of Bill's tongue that gets cut off when a particularly large piece falls from the stone ceiling above them and lands at his feet. _No time_, they all agree silently, and Stan leads them back to the rope they used to climb down and begins to usher them out ahead of him. Richie sends Eddie up first, and follows close behind. Bev scurries up, Ben follows, and then Bill pushes Stan ahead of him. He wants to argue, but that would take more time than it would just to go, so he does. He makes it to the sidewalk at the front of the House on Neibolt, Bill and Mike hot on his heels, just as it folds in on itself with a horrendous noise and a pathetic puff of dust. 

Bev, Ben, Eddie, and Richie have collapsed on the front lawn. Bev and Ben lay side by side, on their backs, chests heaving. They're just staring into the sun, fingers intertwined. Eddie's on his back, too, but Richie's sprawled half on top of him. 

"You're crushing me, asshole," he says, but there's no heat in it. He's running his fingers through Richie's tangled and dirty curls. Richie merely hums in response, pressing his face into the fabric of Eddie's torn and stained hoodie. 

Stan smiles. He turns to Bill and Mike, who are already looking at him. "I really can't explain it," he says, shaking his head. "It's… Unreal." He pauses, then holds his arms out. "I could go for a hug, though. I guess." 

Mike and Bill oblige. Stan thinks he might crack a rib, but he doesn't mind. He feels more arms envelop him from behind and knows the others have dragged their asses off the lawn. Good, he thinks. _You come back to life and all your friends do for the first three minutes after escaping near death is **canoodle.**_

"Stan the Man," Bill says softly, simply. He doesn't say anything else, but it's full of affection and he squeezes just a little bit harder. Mike is crying, he thinks. So is Bev. He can feel Eddie's bony chin digging into his right shoulder. Ben's nearly got his arms around all of them, the bear of a man he's become. Richie says _Stanley Urine_ but Stan's answering swat is gentle because their Trashmouth is still so close to tears. 

"I hate you," he says. He lets that linger for a moment before he lets out a chuckle, and it earns teary laughs all around. 

He doesn't know how he ever forgot these people. 


	2. the one with the dancing at the town house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added to it, did not go back and edit the first part. Ha!

Richie stands at the edge of the jumping rock overlooking the quarry. His fingers are wrapped loosely around Eddie's wrist. He's been touching him in one way or another ever since that moment, when they were still underground and Eddie's death rattle had turned abruptly into a desperate gasp of damp air. 

_The look on Eddie's face as his hands rush to his own chest and prod at intact skin behind tattered and stained cloth is absolute bewilderment. It matches the rest of their faces, and Richie is sure his own. Eddie staggers to his feet and makes a vague gesture with his hands, looking between each of the Losers as they continue to gape at him. Richie, stepping unsteadily closer, tentatively lays his hand over Eddie's breast bone, hopeful but still terrified to believe. Eddie's hand slowly comes up to cover Richie's and squeezes, as it had before, but stronger this time. Richie feels his eyes burn, and his other hand comes up to brace himself against Eddie's shoulder as he begins to cry. _

_Eddie doesn't seem to know what to do with this, but he keeps a tight hold on Richie's hand, presses it between both of his own and holds the tangled bundle of fingers against his unscathed chest. _

_Stan's arrival is no less jarring than Eddie's sudden resurrection before their very eyes, but Richie is unable to muster up much of a reaction. He merely stumbles, pulling Eddie along, behind the grown-up Stanley Uris that he knew was dead a few minutes before. Considering everything, he's not so sure where the line between here and gone really is anymore._

Eddie doesn't seem to mind the grip on his wrist, slack as it is, hadn't said anything even when Richie knew he was probably squeezing a little bit too hard. With his thumb resting where it is he can feel Eddie's heartbeat thrumming against it. 

Bev was the first to jump, just as she had been all those years ago. She got a running start, graceful as a gazelle even after everything, and Ben chased after her. Their lips met beneath the surface like two magnets crashing together, and after all these years an all things considered, the drama is appropriate. Bill followed, whooping like he was thirteen again and Mike, only after getting a good long look at Stan and wrapping him up in another hug, took the plunge as well. Richie is certain he's not the only one who saw the tension leaving his shoulders as he went, and he hopes Mike will leave Derry behind when the rest of them do. Now, only Stan is standing behind Richie and Eddie, the only three not yet splashing around in the waters they played in the summer they all came together. Talk about full circle.

"I have an _open stab wound_ in my cheek. If that water gets in it it's going to get _so_ infected," Eddie is saying to Stan, who's only looking at him with a soft smile. It's subtle, coy almost, but very Stan and unmistakably fond. 

"Eddie Kaspbrak," Stan says, moving slowly to the edge of the rock beside Eddie, "You're the bravest person I know." He laughs, but Richie doesn't think he's joking. 

"Look alive, Stanley," Eddie sneers, apparently not seeing it that way, and smacks his hand on Stan's back between his shoulder blades. It's not very hard, but Stan still steps forward and lets the air take him as if Eddie'd pushed him off the jumping rock with all his might. 

And then there were two. 

Richie glances at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, and he's just frowning down at the water below. Richie's hands are sweaty. He releases Eddie's wrist and wipes his hands on his jeans, which only succeeds in getting them dirtier and no less sweaty since his clothes are all kind of damp anyway. 

Eddie heaves a long-suffering sigh into the silence. "Well, come on, then."

Eddie snatches Richie's hand back, and then Richie finds himself being tugged off the ledge and for just a moment he's weightless. He's weightless, and his only tether to the world and anything sane is Eddie's death grip on his hand. 

When they hit the water, Eddie lets go. The quarry is as it always was when they swam in it as kids. It's sun-warmed but still cool, a little bit dirty but clear enough to see the rocks at the bottom. When Richie finds his way back to the surface, Eddie is treading water and watching the water fight the other five are getting into. They've swam out farther, closer to the edge of the water where they can touch the bottom. Eddie meets Richie's eyes after a moment, his eyebrows furrowed so the worry line crease between them becomes prominent. Richie wants to reach over and smooth it out.

Frowning, Eddie says, "Are you okay?" Richie blinks at him for a second too long, apparently, because he keeps talking. "You're being really quiet. We _did_ it, Rich. Aren't you happy?" 

"Of course I am, Eddie, my love." Richie tries to sound light-hearted, but his voice falls kind of flat. 

"Stan's back. We all made it."

"That's the least the universe could have done for us, really." Eddie narrows his eyes, and Richie sighs. He could keep deflecting, and he might if this were anyone else. But it's Eddie, and Eddie won't let it go. "It's just… We lost you for a minute there."

Eddie frowns at the blunt answer, and his hand rubs at his chest in the water. He stares somewhere over Richie's shoulder for a moment, looking far away, before he drops his hand. "But I made it." 

Richie shakes his head. "No, some voodoo bullshit courtesy of Stan brought you back after you _didn't_ make it."

"That's a technicality."

"I watched you die, man."

Eddie's gaze softens. He's quiet for a moment, looking thoughtful. "It's weird, you know." He says finally. "After a bit you just kind of start feeling distant. Things get dark at the edges like you're in a dream." He pauses, studies Richie's face. He tries to keep his expression neutral, but he'd kind of like to throw up. "I really thought I was dying when I started noticing Stan." 

They both glance over at him at that, at Stan turning away from a stream of water Bev has aimed at his face, indignant but grinning. 

"Noticing him?" 

"I think he was with us the entire time." Eddie chuckles softly. "He was really mad at me for saying that I fucked your mom." 

"He should have been, you stole my joke! You could have at least said something believable. You couldn't get in Mrs. Tozier's pants if you tried."

Eddie swats at him, but smiles as he shakes his head. "He was right though. It would have sucked if those really were my last words."

Richie wonders what last words Eddie would be satisfied with, what he'd really want to say. But ultimately he pushes the thought out of his head. It's not something either of them have to think about now, because Eddie's not dying. They stay in silence for a few minutes before they get too tired to keep treading water and make their way over to the others. 

**********

Back at the Town House, everyone sits, freshly showered and pajama-clad, around the living room. Bev's behind the bar pouring out refills. Mike and Bill each have a half full beer in hand and Stan is still nursing his first whiskey, but she hands Ben and Richie new drinks and then pours red wine into her and Eddie's stemmed glasses. 

Once finished, she goes and settles on the arm of Eddie's chair and hands him his drink. She's wearing Ben's hoodie and a pair of pink silk pajama bottoms, but she's barefoot. The red polish in her toenails is starting to chip. She leans into Eddie and he wraps an arm around her waist. They clink their glasses together before taking a sip. 

Across from them Richie has forced himself into the small space between Mike and Ben on the sofa, grinning at their complaints, and they both eventually threw an arm around him or a leg over his. Stan is lounging, half-lidded like a satisfied cat, in the other arm chair, and Bill has dragged over a bar stool. 

"A toast!" Richie exclaims. "To us, who killed the demon clown!" He raises his glass high and spills a bit of whiskey down his arm.

Indulgent, everyone raises their glasses. Mike lets out a whoop before taking a drink. He looks relaxed in a way Richie hasn't seen him since they were kids. Even during that first night at the Chinese restaurant shooting the shit there had been a certain rigidness to his posture. The entire room, really, is flooded with a calm they haven't felt since before Mike called them home, and it's only made better by the fact that they're all together. In a languid movement, Bev stands, stretches, and begins to fiddle with the old radio situated on a small desk against the wall. She finds a station currently playing Paul Anka's _Put Your Head on My Shoulder_ and holds her hand out to Eddie. 

"Dance with me, Kaspbrak!" She exclaims, and Eddie takes her outstretched hand and allows her to drag him to his feet. He downs the rest of his wine and sets the glass down beside the radio. He's not quite drunk, but he's feeling warm and loose enough to pull Bev into a spin-and-dip that makes her squeal, thrilled, before taking her right hand in his left and finding her waist with the other.

Bev is grinning from ear to ear as they settle into a waltz - never mind that it doesn't really go with the music that well - and Ben eyes her fondly before turning back to his conversation with Mike about the process of building his own house. Richie has removed himself from between them and is instead watching Bev and Eddie from the bar, fingering the rim of his glass. Of _course_ they both actually know how to waltz. 

They look good together - not exactly like a couple, but evenly matched partners. Eddie's a couple inches taller than Bev these days, and she's beaming up at him as he leads their box-step, spinning her maybe too frequently - although if Bev's melodic laughter every time he does is anything to go by, she's still having the time of her life. Eddie's grinning too, looking like he doesn't have a care in the world. His dimples have only gotten deeper with age, and while his manic energy hasn't faded at all since they were kids, he's making it clear that he can channel it better these days. He takes exaggerated, swaying steps and backs Bev across the room just so he can spin her back the other way. Richie feels whole, here in this room, with these people. Forgetting them was the worst thing the clown ever caused, he thinks. He knows that's a selfish opinion, but allows himself that. All those years in L.A., and he'd spent them feeling empty, and being lonely. He'd gone on dates, he'd made friends, he'd become a somewhat famous comedian, and he'd rented a slightly-too-big-for-one-person apartment and filled it with nice things, but nothing he'd ever tried had filled the void. Not the sex, not the extra round of shots, not the fame, and not the leather couch that was big enough to look stupid in his living room. Now, here, listening to Bev's laughter, hearing Bill and Mike's voices trying to talk over the music, seeing Ben looking at Bev with that same enchanted look he had in 1989, Stan watching it all while halfway stoic but all the way fond, Richie knows what had been missing. It's Eddie especially, that smile, the occasional giggle when he takes a clumsy step, those dimples and huge doe eyes, that makes him feel not only whole, but _full_, full of things he's always been too scared to admit but that he wants with every fiber of his being. Eddie dips Bev again, and pecks her cheek before he lets her up.

Richie wonders if this is what he looked like on his wedding day. 

Stan appears beside him just as his thoughts turn down that path, and he's thankful for the distraction. "Look at them go," he says, sipping his drink slowly. Richie merely hums in response, so he continues. "Patty and I took a class before we got married. She loves to dance, but she's terrible at it." 

Richie takes in Stan's soft smile and asks, "You miss her?" 

Stan nods. "More than I can say." Richie knows the feeling. Stan pauses, rubs at the back of his neck. "I called her, a while ago. I wasn't sure what she would remember, if she'd still think I was…" he trails off, shakes his head. "Anyway, she seems to have just lost some time. She was worried about me, didn't know where I was. I told her I'd be home the day after tomorrow."

Richie nods, throws an arm loosely around Stan's shoulders. Inwardly, he's already mourning Stan's absence. He hopes he won't forget him again. "That's really - that's great, man. I'm really glad you're not dead anymore."

Stan rolls his eyes. "Thanks for the sugarcoating. I'm also glad I'm not dead." He eyes Richie, nudges him gently. "Eddie, too." 

"Yeah. Me too." A faster song has come on the radio, and Bev and Eddie have adapted to this by grasping hands and falling into more of a swing dance. Bev's better at it than Eddie, whose footwork could use some improvement, but they're still happily spinning each other around the room. Bill bounces along to the beat of the music on his way to steal Stan's seat, since it's closest to the sofa Ben and Mike still occupy, and Richie turns back to Stan. "I don't think Bev's going back to her husband. Ben got too hot."

"Putting aside her and Ben being perfect for each other," Stan's eyes flicker between Bev's flushed cheeks and the look that passes over Ben's face when he glances toward her, "I saw the bruises on her arms. Ben or no Ben, she's not going back."

Richie downs the last sip of his drink. "I'd like to get my hands on that guy."

"I think we all would," Stan says very matter-of-factly, "But something tells me Bev gave as good as she got."

He's right, of course. Beverly Marsh is many things, but a weak woman she is not. Still, Richie thinks, it would be nice to get the gang together and pay him a visit. They won't, but it would be nice. "You think Bill is itching to get back to Audra?"

Nodding, Stan responds, "He is. We're sharing a cab to the airport."

"Eddie going with you?"

Stan frees himself from Richie's embrace so he can face him, straight-faced yet somehow impish. "He's not, actually. I think he plans to stay a while longer."

Richie tries not to look too pleasantly surprised by that news. He's still all to eager to avoid the fallout of his last disaster of a show for as long as he can. "You'd think he'd be halfway back to the new Mrs. K by now," he jokes, halfheartedly, instead. 

Stan rolls his eyes again. Richie wonders what the mileage is like on those things. They probably could have made it around the globe twice with how much he's rolled them in exasperation in his life. Can eyes be buff? Stan's eyes are probably ripped. "I think he's closer to being on the same page as Bev than me and Bill. You should talk to him." He raises an eyebrow pointedly, and Richie avoids his gaze. He suddenly feels very exposed. He remembers when they were kids. More than once, Stan had rolled his eyes at Richie and Eddie's bickering and said _you sound like my grandparents_, and Richie thinks that maybe Stan had always seen through him. 

Stan squeezes Richie's shoulder, then shakes it gently, insistently. "You should tell him, Rich. It might turn out better than you think." 

"He's married to a _woman_, Stan." At this point, Richie figures he may as well admit it. Stan knows anyway, and he's too tired - and just a little bit tipsy - to lie. "It's just gonna blow up in my face." Richie has thought about it. Of course he has. Ever since he walked into the Chinese restaurant and banged that stupid gong and then looked up only to be caught in the biggest, chocolate-and-honey brown eyes in the world, he's been thinking about it. When Eddie gave that jittery, awkward little wave of greeting, when he suggested leaving and Eddie was right at his heels, when he came back to the Town House to Bev bandaging Eddie's cheek, hell, even when his hands were splayed over an open wound and soaked with Eddie's blood, he was _thinking_ about it. 

He doesn't know what Eddie would say. Eddie is a spitfire, always ready for a fight, but he's kind. He might let Richie down easy, it might be fine. But then he might never talk to Richie again. Worse, he might hate Richie for it. For thinking about him like that. For thinking about him like that when they all thought he was dying, when the only thought should have been getting him help or making him more comfortable. 

Richie doesn't say any of this, but the look on Stanley's face tells him that he may as well have. "You know, Richie," he says, almost conversationally, but with too intent a gaze to successfully feign nonchalance. "When we all thought Eddie was dying, I was absolutely livid with him for saying that he fucked your mom. You want to know why?" 

Richie knows Stan is going to tell him whether he says yes or not, because the explanation is why he gave the backstory in the first place. But Stan just looks at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, so after a moment he deadpans, "Yes, Stan, _please_ tell me why."

"Because I know how many other, more important things he'd rather leave you with." Stan lets go of Richie's shoulder and turns back to Bev and Eddie, who have slowed down significantly, breathing hard, and are just holding each other now, gently swaying, and talking. "Eddie's scared of a lot of things, Rich, worse when we were kids. Especially _germs_. Don't forget all those times he brought you soup and watched movies with you when you were sick. He didn't do that for the rest of us." 

"It was because I was home alone," Richie insists, but it comes out quiet as he remembers. Eddie, wearing rubber gloves and a mask over his nose and mouth, bringing him homemade chicken-noodle and letting him pick the movie. He looked ridiculous, but Richie loved him more in those moments because he felt loved in those moments. 

"No," Stan says sternly. "It was because he loved you. I know he was always special to you, Rich, I knew it back then and I know it's still true now. Trust me when I tell you that you've always been special to him, too." 

Richie doesn't respond, and Stanley doesn't say anything else. Stan's said his piece and Richie… Well, Richie just stands there holding an empty glass and tries to imagine going back to Beverly Hills alone. It's really, really hard. 


	3. the one from bev and eddie's side of the room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 in one day with one being super short because I do what I want and this is a dumpster fire anyway

"So, my husband attacked me before I left." 

Bev says this very calmly, very matter-of-fact, with her arms around Eddie's neck and her head resting on his shoulder. He's so surprised at the sudden admission that for a second, he just stays silent and keeps swaying back and forth with her. It's not that he hadn't guessed; there's an obvious tan line on her ring finger where her wedding band used to be, and when she took off her jacket to reveal the tank top she wore underneath, she also revealed the bruises up her arms. She hadn't tried to hide them, but Eddie still hadn't expected her to bring them up. 

Part of him wants to use his hands at her waist to push her back far enough to see her face. Part of him wants very badly to see Tom hurt. But the bigger parts of him want to hold her close, and knows that it doesn't matter what happens to Tom half as much as it matters what happens to Bev. He pulls her closer, and tries to match her tone when he says, "My wife threatened to call the police when I left and froze all my credit cards. My phone has been off since I got on the plane because she wouldn't stop calling." 

Bev hums. "That reminds me of someone." She doesn't say it in a scathing way. She isn't even teasing him. That would be hypocritical, they both know, considering how Bev's father treated her and how Tom did. She's merely making a connection. 

"Yeah," Eddie says softly. "Me too." More and more these days, really. His mother died years ago, but not before he met Myra. Sonia loved Myra, and Myra loved being the constant that Eddie needed while caring for his dying mother. Myra liked to be needed, and up until Mike's call shocked his system, he'd clung to the only life he knew. Never mind that he wasn't happy or in control, at least he'd been taken care of and safe. Always safe. 

Now, he's holding Bev and he remembers how much he loves her and the rest of the Losers. He remembers how much his mother _ hated _Bev, for no good reason. She hadn't liked Richie either, or Mike. She only really approved of Stan and Bill, and even Big Bill had always been on thin ice with how fast he rode that bike without a helmet. Myra wouldn't like them either. She'd think Bev was dirty like his mother had, for hanging out with six men and no other women. She'd think that Richie was crude and uncouth, and that Mike was riffraff, and he's sure she'd find something to hate about the rest of them, too.

It's not that there isn't anything good about Myra, because there is. She likes to donate to charities at every holiday. She has good taste in classical music, and she's always been understanding that Eddie is rarely in the mood. He tries to think of more good things, but everything that drew him to her in the first place now just seems like the problem. She's a safety net. She's Sonia Kaspbrak 2.0. Beverly has never been more right in her life. 

"So, Ben, huh?" Eddie says after another few moments, and he feels Bev's breath against his neck as she laughs softly. 

"So, Richie, huh?" Eddie stiffens, but Bev slides her fingers up into his hair and combs them gently through, murmuring, "Don't look, but he's watching us," and somehow her nonchalance makes him settle. 

He laughs, once, even though there isn't anything that he finds particularly funny about this. When Mike called, he crashed his car. That was realizing he forgot and remembering a rollercoaster of emotions where the frequent dips were all into mind-numbing terror. After Mike called, he went home, packed everything he could fit into every suitcase he owned, and left his wife while she screamed his name from their front door. _ That _ was remembering the people he loved. Remembering the woman in his arms for the badass girl she was, remembering sitting on Bill's handlebars, pretending not to notice Ben's New Kids on the Block poster, Stan's book of native birds and his telescope, Mike's campfire stories. It was remembering lying in a hammock with the length of his body pressed against another boy's, one with a Trashmouth and dorky glasses, and how he felt when that boy settled his hand on his calf to stop him from putting his feet in his face and occasionally grazed his thumb over his skin. 

When he walked out of the New York apartment he shared with Myra, he wasn't sure what his plan was. He didn't know if he planned to stay away or come back, only that he'd brought enough of his things that he could go at least a few weeks without having to return. When he got to the restaurant and met with Mike, he started leaning toward staying away. When Richie Tozier came in wearing a leather jacket over a bright ass, ugly button up and announced his entrance by banging the gong, he was dumbstruck and almost completely certain that this was exactly where he was supposed to be. 

"I didn't really want to tell him that I fucked his mother." 

Bev snorts. "I don't think _ anyone _ wanted you to say that, Eddie." 

"Stan was less than impressed with my choice of last words, that's for sure." 

"Fortunately, you've been blessed with the opportunity to say many, many more words." Bev pauses and lifts her head, pulls back to look Eddie in the eye. "So, what do you really want to tell him?" 

Eddie makes a face. "That I married someone exactly like my mother but I wanted to leave her the second I remembered he existed?" 

Bev grins. "Oh, Eddie Kaspbrak," she lifts a hand to his cheek over his bandage and presses her lips to the other one. "You're really something else." 


	4. the one without the black-out curtains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This happened after I rewarched chapter 2

It's nearing midday by the time the thought of sleeping occurs to any of them. Eddie and Bev have long since collapsed back onto the furniture, Bev over Ben and Bill's laps where they sit on the sofa - Bill once again stealing a seat after Mike dared to venture to the bathroom - and Eddie back in his chair, his head against one armrest and his legs dangling over the other. Bev's half asleep, turning her face into Ben's tummy and snaking an arm around his waist. Bill's got her legs in his lap and is absently rubbing at the silky fabric over her shin, dozing himself. Richie has settled himself onto the floor in front of Eddie's seat and is leaning back against it with the remnants of his last drink at his side. Eddie has one arm draped over his middle, and his other is hanging down with his hand settled on Richie's head. He's slowly curling his fingers into his hair and letting his fingernails scratch along his scalp, and Richie's soaking _that_ up like a sleepy puppy. Mike is sunk down low in the other arm chair, peering half-lidded over his mostly empty third beer at the floor, a satisfied half-smile quirking his lips. 

Stan is standing behind the bar after cleaning up most of the mess they'd all made. So far he's seen no proof that anyone actually _works_ at the Town House, but he'd rather they not be saddled with any extra charges later because someone bothered to show up. He's not quite as tired as the rest of them clearly feel. Understandable, considering that they haven't slept since they arrived in Derry and that Stan has only been in such a state as to even _feel_ fatigue for a few hours. Rounding the bar, Stan stoops to pick up Richie's glass. Eddie's blinking long and slow, and he lifts the hand that's not petting Richie like he's moving through molasses to rest it on Stan's arm before he can stand totally back up. 

"We missed you, Stan," Eddie mumbles. 

"I missed you guys too, Eds," Stan chuckles. "Nobody has to miss anybody anymore." 

Smiling, Eddie lets his arm drop so Stan can go put Richie's dirty glass with the rest of them. He scratches at Richie’s scalp again. Richie hums, and Stan rolls his eyes but can’t help the grin on his face when he comes to stand in the middle of the room, looking around at all his sleepy friends with his arms crossed and a brow quirked like a stern mother. 

“I think it’s probably about time for bed, hmm?” There is a low, collective groan from at least Bev and Richie, who seem all too comfortable right where they are. After moving to collect the beer Mike still holds, Stan turns on Richie. “You are not staying on the floor like that all night-” a brief pause, and a glance out the window, “-_day_. I don’t want to hear you bitching about your back.” 

Richie whines, but his eyes open anyway as Eddie unthreads his fingers from his hair and takes his hand back, and he drags himself to his feet so Eddie can swing his legs around and stand up instead of trying to haul himself back over the armrest. 

Mike stands and stretches, then pulls Stan into a hug. It’s the third he’s given him since he became corporeal again, and Stan detects a hint of guilt amongst the affection. He makes a mental note to bring it up with Mike later, to make sure he knows that just because it was his phone call that made Stan remember, that doesn’t mean what Stan did after that was his fault. Not now, though. Mike only pats Stan’s back a couple times, grunts a _goodnight_, and collects a key from behind the front desk. At some point he must have managed to check into a room here, but Stan can’t fathom when. Nobody had particularly wanted Mike to have to go all the way back to the library after their little celebration, and anyway, it’s likely a crime scene by now. With Derry being Derry, Stan doubts anything will come of an investigation into Bowers’s death, but they should probably steer as clear as possible for the day regardless. 

Stan has his own key in his pocket. Or, rather, he has a key to Ben’s room, which he was informed by a tipsy Beverly that he could have because Ben, who had been a _darling_ shade of red at the time, wouldn’t be needing it. Bill helps Ben gather Bev up into his arms and then rubs at his eyes and stumbles away from the sofa. He ruffles Eddie’s hair as he passes him, and Eddie seems to be too tired to muster up any rage over it. Richie stretches his arms over his head, and Eddie shoulders a little bit closer and prompts Richie to take the opportunity to drape his arm over his shoulders instead of dropping it back to his side. Stan has never seen such joint effort put into an arm being put around someone, and the way they avoid each other's gaze and try so desperately to remain nonchalant that they're basically making a scene makes him want to kick them into next week. Maybe they'll have gotten their shit together by then.

Richie, stifling a yawn, says, “My room better have black-out curtains,” and then everyone is trailing up the stairs.

Stan goes up last, turning out lights as he goes. Ben's suitcase is in the room, but he's apparently either too drunk or too tired to want to retrieve it. The bed is still made, as they all likely are. Up until now there has been too much constant and imminent danger to consider sleeping. 

Stan doesn't have any luggage with him. He counts himself lucky, really, that when he'd been galavanting around as a specter he had imagined himself wearing clothes, and that whatever power had brought him back had also brought back the sweater and jeans he'd been wearing when he got Mike's call. He tugs the sweater over his head, toes off his shoes, and pulls off the jeans and sets the clothes, folded neatly, atop the dresser with his shoes lined up on the floor in front of it. He remembers something Eddie once told him about hotel bedspreads, and climbs in between the fitted and flat sheets so the comforter isn't directly touching him. His phone buzzes, and he smiles. 

_ Lunch break _, Patty's text begins. _ Do you still think you can get that time off work?? Miss you._ It ends with a heart emoji. 

_ I'll get the time off. I'll quit. We'll move into a cottage in the woods and adopt a little girl and a cocker spaniel. _

Patty's response to that is just a picture of her face, grinning, holding a bite of what Stan is sure is a more-cheese-and-croutons-than-greens salad up to her lips. It's followed promptly by a screenshot of the adoption page of a local shelter, which has a four year old cocker spaniel named Lucky available for an adoption fee of $100. 

Stan thinks that's appropriate. 

Lucky, indeed. 

**********

Long after all the other doors down the hallway have closed, Richie and Eddie linger outside the door to Richie's room. Richie's still got his arm around Eddie, but it's gone a bit stiff. After some consideration, he drops it, and Eddie turns to face him. His head is cocked just slightly to the right, his big eyes tired but still bright as he fixes Richie with a somewhat quizzical expression.

He stays that way, apparently lost in thought, for a few moments, and Richie just stares back with mild discomfort steadily growing into a full-on gay panic. 

If he were a braver man he'd just lay it all out on the table, but it's not that easy. It's not that he's _too_ solidly in the closet, either. Professionally, yes. He's been throwing out jokes about hookers and ex-girlfriends for years and his manager has never understood why they fall so flat. _It's because it's not my joke_, Richie always says, but what he really means is _it's because it's not **me.** _

No, it's not that he hasn't come to terms with his sexuality. He stopped trying to sleep with women after college, after the last time he failed to finish and then went home and got himself off to the thought of rougher hands on his body, hands like his own but smaller and with a less severe hitchhiker's thumb, and when he came it was with the image of honey-and-chocolate speckled eyes looking into his soul. 

Coming back to Derry, Richie was already entirely sure that he was into dudes. Walking into the Jade of the Orient, though, walking right into that same gaze he'd imagined countless times in his dark bedroom… It was like preteen Richie Tozier crashed out of whatever closet he'd been locked in for all those years and clambered right into his body. All those memories, red shorts and legs and a hug and those _eyes. _

Richie is into dudes, but the feelings for Eddie that hit him like a tidal wave when he saw him in that stupid Chinese restaurant make him feel like he's drowning, all the time, in all the best and scariest ways. 

Eddie says, "So my room-" right when Richie begins, "Eds, I-" and so they both stop and look at each other, Richie feeling bare and Eddie just watching him with that look on his face for a few too-long seconds before he chuckles. 

"You first?" offers Eddie. 

"No, ah," Richie rubs at the back of his neck, feeling himself flush. "It was nothing. What were you gonna say?" 

Eddie's eyebrow quirks briefly but settles quickly, and he shrugs sheepishly and nods in the direction of his room. "My floor is still covered in glass and blood." 

Richie blinks. "Do you want me to help you clean-" 

"Can I stay with you?" 

Richie is so taken aback it takes him a second to nod, and Eddie mimicks the gesture with a small smile. "Okay. I'll be right back." He hurries into the room next door, and Richie digs the key to his room out of his pocket. His hand shakes when he goes to unlock the door, and it takes him a couple tries to get it in and turn it. By the time he has the door open and is shuffling inside, Eddie is at his heels with his toiletry bag in hand. Eddie doesn't close the door when he goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth. His shoulders stretch the fabric of his shirt over his back when he leans forward to splash water on his face, and Richie thinks it's good for his sanity that they're already dressed for bed. He goes straight for the bed and falls back on top of the covers. He takes in a deep breath and holds it there, counts to 30, and lets it out slowly the way he does when he gets antsy before shows. It was another comedian who taught him that, the guy who signed up for the slot after his one night back when he was still doing 15-minute shows in badly lit bars reeking of cigarettes smoke. He doesn't know where that guy is now, couldn't even tell you his name. He was older, had a bald spot, and Richie had the feeling he'd been doing short sets for little or no profit for a really long time. Richie hopes he found whatever it was he was looking for in those places. 

"Do you have any idea how often hotels wash their comforters?" 

Richie opens one eye and peers up at Eddie, who's got his hands on his hips and his upper lip curled in disgust. "No?" 

"_Exactly_," Eddie snaps, slapping at Richie's knee. "Up." 

"I think you're forgetting _who's whose_ guest here right now, Spaghetti," Richie retorts, but Eddie just smacks his leg some more until he rolls off the bed with a groan. "You're such a little imp," he drawls, leaning against the dresser and watching Eddie grab the corner of the bedspread with a tissue and yank it off the bed. 

"This blanket probably hasn't been washed in _at least_ a year, Richie." Eddie replies, dropping the tissue into the wastebasket and kicking the comforter into the corner of the room. 

"Maybe, but it's not like anyone ever actually stays in Derry, man. This room probably hasn't been rented out in years." Richie untucks the flat sheet on his side of the bed and feigns sincerity when he asks, "Is it safe to get in there, Dr. K?" 

"That's fair," Eddie says, already climbing between the sheets on the other side of the bed and trying very hard to ignore his teasing. "Do not do the British guy with me right now." He mutters after a moment, apparently unable to help himself. 

Richie snickers and slides into bed beside Eddie. They used to do this a lot, when they were kids. Especially after _It_ happened, they often liked to spend nights together to quiet the nightmares. They all had, really, but more often than not Richie found himself climbing the trellis running up the side of the Kaspbrak house to rap softly on Eddie's window, usually to find Eddie already awake. Sometimes he tried to act annoyed, sometimes he freaked out about every little noise that Sonia might hear, but Richie always knew he was welcome. Now, he's quieted by the feel of a warm body beside him. He hasn't slept with anyone in a long time. He's had sex with people, but he hasn't _slept_ with them. It's been lots of hotel rooms, either because he's on tour or because he doesn't want to bring them to his home. That always feels too personal. Somehow, so does this. It's not home, in the sense of being his own bed in his own room, but it _is_ Derry. Home with a capital H, the place that shaped him and made him forget but not quite all the way. Eddie's home, too. It's a funny idea, Richie thinks, that their home is the same place. Together. That Richie's home is Eddie's home and Eddie's home is Richie's. He tries to imagine Eddie in his flat in Beverly Hills but he can only see him criticizing the size and placement of the couch. It's probably an accurate approximation, and to be fair his couch _does_ look awkward. 

"It's been a long time since I shared a bed with anyone." 

Richie's breath hitches, if only because Eddie's echo of his own thoughts is a bit jarring. "Me too," he breathes, unsure how else to respond. He eyes Eddie and finds him studying his wedding band, no longer on his finger but held between his thumb and index, glinting dangerously in the light streaming in from between the (not black-out) curtains like Mike's bolt gun right before he pulls the trigger. _Lamb to the slaughter_, he thinks dryly, and says, "Trouble in paradise?" His voice is just this side of too high to pull off the easy, joking tone he'd been going for, and Eddie looks at him out of the corner of his eye. 

"Paradise," Eddie echoes softly, then snorts. "_Yeah_, paradise." He barks a laugh that startles Richie a little and tosses the ring across the room in the general direction of the trash can. Then he smears his hands up over his face and into his hair, and Richie meets his eyes with raised eyebrows when he opens them. "Dude, my life is _miserable_." 

"What?" Is all Richie can manage to ask through his incredulity. 

Eddie huffs and turns onto his side so he's facing Richie. "I may as well have never left Derry," he says, frown lines forming. "No, it would have been _better_ if I never left Derry. Leaving made me forget…" 

He trails off, so Richie prompts him to continue with a whispered echo of "Better?" 

"I forgot everything that was important, that my pills were placebos, that I don't even have _asthma_." Eddie pauses, looking like he wants to reach for his inhaler but instead just closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "I forgot you." 

Richie settles into his side so they're face to face. "You wanna know something selfish?" Eddie opens his eyes and nods. "I keep thinking… that I wouldn't be so angry if It just didn't make us forget." Richie fidgets, adjusts his glasses that got knocked askew when he turned onto his side. "It's a shitty thing to think, 'cause I know people died. But I just… God, man, my life has been so miserable too." 

"I've been thinking about that a lot, too," Eddie mumbles. "I didn't realize how bad things were until I got here. My life in New York was never spectacular but it was safe and I always knew what was coming. I've spent most of the last couple days completely terrified and having no idea what was going to happen, but I've felt…" 

"Like this is where you're meant to be?" 

"Yeah. But not because of Derry." 

"I know what you mean." 

Silence settles upon them for a few minutes before Eddie breaks it with a rushed, "I'm gonna get a divorce." 

"I'm glad you said that, I couldn't have guessed from you throwing your wedding ring across the room." 

"I'm gay." 

"You're _what_?" 

"Homosex-" 

Richie cuts him off. "I know what gay means. If you're gay why did you marry a woman?" 

Eddie shrugs, picking at a loose thread at the end of his sleeve. "Forgot." 

Richie's head is already spinning, but that sends him into hysterics. "You _forgot_?! _I'm_ gay, but I knew that in L.A. Who _forgets_ they're gay?" 

"I was very sheltered as a child." Richie barks a laugh, and Eddie looks defensive. "You try having your mom talk about AIDs and _dirty boys who touch other boys_ all the time and not be repressed." When Richie doesn't respond, he says, "The leper offered to blow me, once. Couldn't get hard for weeks." 

If Eddie had been aiming to make Richie cry with laughter, he's successful. When he regains control of himself, Eddie is watching him with a look that's both patient and unamused. "If you're _quite_ finished," he begins, shaking his head, "There's something else I wanted to tell you." 

Richie sobers quickly at that, but tries very hard not to think. Apparently Eddie's gay, which is something that's an odd mixture of shocking and half-expected. But just because Eddie's into dudes doesn't mean he's into Richie. He needs to crush any hope before it starts to bloom in his chest. "There's more to unpack?" Richie chuckles uneasily. "Maybe you should just throw away the whole suitcase, Eds, seems like a lot of effort." 

"Shut _up_, Rich." Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "I might be repressed, but at least I can read a room." 

"Beep, beep," Richie says, shamefaced. "Sorry." 

Eddie waves his hand dismissively. "Just listen," he says. "Back in the sewers, when I-" he gestures to his chest with a grimace and then shakes his head. "I shouldn't have said what I said, they would have been the worst last words." 

"It was a good joke. I mean, you really got me that time." 

"I saw your face, Rich." Eddie says it softly, but his tone is firm. "It's not what you wanted me to say any more than it's what Stan or Bev wanted me to say." 

Richie feels restless suddenly, and he pushes himself up until he's upright against the headboard, scowling down at Eddie. "Okay, so it was a dick move. Happy?" 

"Well, no," Eddie says, sitting up as well. "Not about that, anyway. I'm happy that I got a second chance." 

"Second chance for what?" Richie's heart is beating very hard, suddenly. It's loud in his ears, so loud that he wonders if Eddie can hear it, too. 

"Everything?" Eddie gestures to the hotel room around them, but he clearly means more than that. "Happiness. Love." He smiles softly and searches Richie's face, and Richie just watches him, his thoughts flying so fast it's practically white noise. 

Richie falters under Eddie's scrutiny, rubs at the back of his neck with a grimace. "I feel like you're getting at something here, Eds, but I can't stress to you how much I _really_ don't want to assume what it is." 

Eddie rolls his eyes. "I'll spell it out for you, then," and he lifts a hand, gently touches Richie's cheek, traces the line of his jaw, and glides it around to the back of his neck. Richie shivers and lets his eyes fall closed as Eddie pulls him forward. 

If this is a dream, Richie doesn't want to wake up. If he's still in the Deadlights, he hopes nobody ever pulls him out of them. If he managed to stay down underneath Neibolt and die with Eddie and everything after that has all just been some weird version of Heaven, well, call him a believer. 

Eddie's lips are soft, but he kisses rough in a clumsy kind of way that betrays nerves or maybe being out of practice. Somehow he doubts Myra is very physically affectionate. There's a knock of teeth that would put Richie off if this were anyone else. It doesn't happen again, and Eddie's enthusiasm more than makes up for it, as do his blown pupils and the way his chest heaves when they pull apart. 

Richie thinks he probably has a really dumb look on his face, but he doesn't care. His mind is a little bit blown, after all. Preteen Richie Tozier is _quaking_, he probably just jizzed in his pants. He'd been too stunned to make use of his hands - a shame, but he hopes to have the chance to correct that - and he slowly raises them from their resting place in his lap to either side of Eddie's face, gentle over his bandaged cheek. 

"I have been in love with you since I was thirteen years old." He breathes the words into the small space between them. Eddie breathes them in and holds Richie's wrist with one hand, the other still at the back of his neck, fingers in his hair. "I couldn't remember you, but I knew something was missing. I've been…" his lip quivers, but he refuses to cry. He won't ruin this. "I missed you, even when I didn't know who you were." 

"I watched all your specials," Eddie murmurs. "They never made me laugh, but I always watched." 

"Gee, thanks, Eddie." 

Eddie laughs breathlessly. "It wasn't _you_. We both know it wasn't you. You've always been funny, but that guy who stands up on stage pandering to people he'd never talk to in real life? He's not very funny, and he's not you." 

Richie can't argue with that. He hit the nail right on the head. "I should try writing my own material again," he says thoughtfully, grazing his thumbs over Eddie's cheekbones. 

"That, I'd love to see." He smiles softly, then drops Richie's wrist and raises his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn. "But, like. Tomorrow." 

Richie chuckles. "Bedtime it is, then, Kaspbrak." 

They settle back down, closer together than before. Eddie nestles himself under Richie's arm with his own thrown around him, and Richie only hesitates for a moment before he tangles their legs together beneath the sheets. 


	5. the one with the strangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think, if you want. I've got stuff planned!

Stan dreams of turtles. Sea turtles, he thinks. He's swimming in the quarry, but it's much deeper than he's ever seen it, and he's floating far beneath the surface with bubbles raising from his lips and drifting upward in cartoonish zig-zags. They have to be sea turtles, because they're absolutely massive. He looks down at one swimming by below him, and it's easily the size of his car. He's vaguely aware that he's dreaming. There's some part of his mind that knows he can't _actually_ breathe underwater, and that part thinks that maybe real turtles never get quite so big. 

He was more of a bird kid, but he's fairly certain there aren't any living reptiles that reach the size of a small SUV. Except for maybe alligators, Stan muses. Those things get huge, which is kind of scary. Apart from being unamused at Richie saying he should move to Florida because he was already practically geriatric, Stan had been vehemently against this because he didn't want to live somewhere where he could find a moderately sized dinosaur sitting in his yard. 

Imagine his surprise upon moving to Georgia and finding out that there were alligators _there_, too. 

For quite some time Stan only watches the turtles. They're huge, but not menacing. That doesn't mean they don't seem powerful, because they most certainly do. They have a faint golden aura shining around them. One looks at him as it passes by and he thinks he sees it nod like it's an acquaintance on the street. 

The serenity of the moment is broken by a splash above him as a body hits the water, and Stan swims backward a bit as a man, flailing, sinks down to his level. He panics for a moment, clutching at his throat and spluttering before he seems to realize that wherever he is, it's not a place that follows the rules of the real world. He takes a breath and releases it in bubbles that bounce upward alongside Stan's, stilling enough for Stan to actually get a good look at him. He's younger than Stan is, probably in his early-to-mid-twenties. He's got dark hair and green eyes, tan skin, full lips. He's wearing a pink t-shirt with a bomber jacket over it and black jeans. He's looking at Stanley, looking incredibly unsettled, almost frightened, and Stan feels oddly like he knows him, even though he's never met him in his life. 

He takes in a breath to speak but it catches in his throat when, behind the man in front of him, he spots a shape on the back of one of the many massive turtles swimming peacefully by. 

"_Eddie?_"

The younger man swivels his head to look where Stan is, and Eddie, who's lying across the massive shell and gazing lazily upward at the light shining down from the surface, perks up and looks over. "Stan?" 

Eddie looks like he's about to say something else, but his gaze catches on the younger man, who still looks confused beyond belief, and he drifts toward them. "You…" Eddie trails off, cocks his head to the side, shakes it. "Sorry, I just really feel like I know you from somewhere." He's too casual, and Stan recognizes this just as the man in the jacket seems to, but Stan can't help his own nonchalance. After all, it's just a dream. 

"Where the hell am I?" Pink Shirt's breath stutters and he grabs at his pants pockets. They're empty. His eyes grow impossibly wider and he scrambles, reaches into his jacket pockets, comes up empty-handed. He wheezes a little. "I can't-" _wheeze_. 

Eddie places a hand on his shoulder, and he grabs Eddie's wrist. "In your mouth and out your nose," he says gently, and when he gets a frantic nod and a breath in in response he says, "Count to ten, then let it out." This gets repeated several times, Eddie gently coaxing and the young man's breaths steadily becoming less rattly. 

"I think we're dreaming," Stan says when he thinks Pink Shirt has mostly regained himself. "I'd say _I'm_ dreaming but I have the oddest feeling…" 

"That we're not a figment of your imagination?" Eddie supplies, and when Pink Shirt releases his wrist he gives his shoulder a pat and removes his hand to cross his arms over his chest. "This is really weird, man." 

"I…" Pink Shirt rubs his hands over his face. "I remember… The clown." 

Stan and Eddie snap to attention at that. "The clown," Stan repeats tentatively. "_The_ clown?" 

"There was… Those guys, they attacked me, and I-I got thrown over the bridge a-and the clown, the _clown_," Horror dawns again over his face, and he covers his mouth. "Oh, God, _Don_." 

"Wait-" Stan wants to ask many things. Who attacked him? Who's Don? Who's he? Why did Pennywise go after him, wasn't It usually more kid-oriented? That had been the case for years, endless reports of missing children every few decades, backed up by Ben's summer research. Stan had been under the impression that the Losers still being a target all these years later was just because of pride and their plan to kill It. But if it had gotten him, how could he be talking to him right now? He doesn't get the chance to ask any of it. There's a banging sound that stirs him, makes the dream slip away like someone pulled out the stopper on the quarry and it all got sucked down the drain of the universe; he's left only in blackness for the split second before he opens his eyes. 

"Stan?" Mike's saying on the other side of the door. "We were thinking about going out for dinner, what do you think?" 

Stan sits up against the headboard, rubs at his eyes and lets out his breath in a puff. "Uh, yeah, sure," he answers after a beat. "Just give me a minute, I'll be right out." 

*******

Stan takes a few moments to wash his face and brush his teeth, then studies himself in the mirror. He looks just like he did yesterday, like he did every single yesterday for the past couple decades, but something feels different now. He's standing in the town he barely remembered he ever lived in just a few days ago, spent the night drinking and fooling around with friends he'd forgotten but never wanted to be apart from again. There was something that had been missing, but he hadn't realized it until he saw them all again and felt that familiar tug between each of them and his heart, that undeniable connection that couldn't be severed by anything in the world. Not time, distance, or faulty memories. Apparently not even death. 

There's also some strange awareness in the back of his mind, though. Something tickling at the edges of his consciousness, just barely out of his reach. He thinks of the turtles. In his dream they had eyes that looked all wrong, all too aware. He thinks of the light down in the caverns, brighter and even more ethereal than the Deadlights. He thinks of the voice in his head, and the young man in his dream. He thinks of Eddie. 

He shakes his head and goes to get dressed in the only clothes he has with him, runs a hand through his hopelessly mussed hair, and goes to meet the rest of the Losers downstairs. 

*********

Eddie's eyes snap open at the sound of a knock on the door, and he feels breath at his neck as Richie sighs, octopus limbs squeezing and bringing him impossibly closer. Eddie rolls his eyes, but only raises a hand to the crown of Richie's head to scratch at his scalp, eliciting a hum from the lankier man that grows steadily more aware as he drifts closer to wakefulness. 

"Richie?" It's Bev's voice at the door. She knocks again. Richie utters a gutteral noise in response that's just loud enough for her to hear through the door. She laughs. "Hey, Rich, we're going out to dinner, do you want to come?" 

"Food," Richie replies, earning another chuckle from Bev. 

"Eddie's door is open, but he's not in his room," she says this conversationally, a feigned air of aloofness lilting her voice just so. "Do you know where he could be?" 

Richie comes to full attention at that, lifting his face from the crook of Eddie's neck to catch his eyes with a bleary but panicked gaze. There's a bit of drool leaking out the corner of his mouth. The collar of Eddie's shirt is damp. Eddie curls his lip up at the drool, making Richie's face fall. But Eddie is self-aware, and unwilling to make any more stupid mistakes regarding the people he loves and the things he wants. Before his disgust can be misconstrued as shame, he calls out, "I'm here, Bev. Dinner sounds great." 

There's a beat of silence, and Eddie can practically see Bev doing a victory dance on the other side of the door. He half expects her to squeal in excitement, say something cheesy or teasing, but instead she just sounds incredibly happy when she says, "We were thinking the diner, like old times. I'll see you guys downstairs." 

Eddie knows he's going to hear about this later, about how proud Bev is of him and how glad she is that Richie and Eddie have both finally found someone to hold onto and be happy with. He'll probably hear about Ben. And he'll appreciate it later, but right now he's thankful that Bev chose to walk away and leave them be. 

There's a dream clinging to the edge of his mind, something about turtles and Stan and a bomber jacket. He shakes it from his mind. A random dream is not nearly as important as making sure Richie knows that that kiss wasn't a fluke. Eddie isn't the scared, repressed kid he used to be. Well, that's a lie. He's still scared, of all sorts of things. He's a little bit scared of being with Richie, but only in the way anyone is afraid when they finally get what they want more than anything else. He's afraid of fucking it up. 

After a long moment he finally moves his gaze from the door to Richie, who's still curled around him and whose knee is still between his thighs, and finds him already watching him, looking nothing short of flabbergasted and utterly enchanted. He's not wearing his glasses, so he's squinting a bit, but his stupid squinty eyes are sparkling. They're beautiful eyes, always have been. They always look huge behind his glasses, especially so behind the thick lenses of the coke bottle glasses he wore when they were kids. Without them, they don't look quite so huge, but Eddie takes a moment to admire the single streak of green in the blue of Richie's left iris, running his fingers through Richie's hair while he looks up at him tenderly, almost shyly. Eddie motions pointedly to the drool, and Richie wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. 

"You didn't think I'd hide, did you?"

Richie closes his eyes, leans back into Eddie's hand at the back of his head. "No. Yes. I don't know." 

"Last night, Rich, I didn't... I wouldn't do that just to backtrack and hide from it all. I wouldn't just take this away, from either of us." 

A smile gently quirks Richie's lips. "I know you wouldn't." He sighs, opens his eyes again. "I just… I guess I just kind of feel like it can't be real. This. You. Part of me thinks that this has to be another trick, and that the rug is gonna be pulled out from under me any second." 

Eddie holds Richie's hand against his chest, puts enough pressure that Richie can feel his heart beating. "It's real. I'm real. And I love you." 

Richie flushes, just a little. He squeezes Eddie's fingers. "I love you, too," he breathes. 

"Good," Eddie says, making Richie laugh. He smiles, and continues. "I want people to know about that. That I love you and that you love me. I want our friends to know, I want Myra to know, I want random people walking down the street to _know_, Rich." 

"Mean it?" Richie looks for all the world like a hopeful child, and Eddie feels briefly like he's Grown-Up Eddie assuring Preteen Richie that someday he'll get everything he doesn't think he can have. 

"Cross my heart," Eddie uses Richie's hand that he still holds to mime an X over the left side of his chest. "And hope to-" 

"Shhh," Richie says. "I believe you." He doesn't say anything else, just keeps his hand over Eddie's heart and ghosts his lips over the sharp line of his jaw. Eddie almost wants to laugh, but doesn't. _Hope to die_ is what he was going to say, and he knows why Richie doesn't want to hear that right now. Eddie thinks the irony is a little funny, thought Richie might, too. Really, he probably will tomorrow, or in a week. Maybe he should be more bothered by his own death, but for once in his life Eddie can't find it in himself to be too concerned. He doesn't remember much beyond being impaled and then suddenly being fine. He remembers not really understanding why Richie was crying, but still squeezing his hands and holding them where he could feel the pounding of his heart, because it _was_ pounding. _Too soon_, Eddie thinks, stroking Richie's hair. _Sorry, Rich_. 

There's a tickle of stubble as Richie kisses across his jaw and then moves down to his neck. Eddie closes his eyes and lets himself feel it, the pleasant warmth and the swipe of Richie's tongue, soft breaths almost reverent right below his ear. Before the warmth can grow into anything more, Eddie gently tugs at Richie's hair with the hand still buried in it. Richie's lips leave his neck and Eddie opens his eyes to look down at him. He swallows thickly. 

"We'd better get dressed before they leave without us." 

Richie looks about ready to do away with the idea of dinner entirely, even opens his mouth, ready to argue, but his stomach growls as if to make a point. Eddie raises an eyebrow, and Richie groans; he reluctantly disentangles himself from around Eddie to roll off the edge of the bed and onto his feet. Richie goes into the bathroom, shuts the door. Eddie allows himself another moment of lying back against the pillows, chest feeling full, before he gets to his feet and goes to collect a fresh outfit from the suitcase in the room next door. 

******

If Stan's gaze lingers on Eddie a little too long a few too many times at dinner, nobody really takes any notice. He tries very hard to shake off the feeling that there's some sort of mystery going on here, and to squash the urge to solve it. 

If Eddie's eyes are drawn to everything pink the entire time they're there, from Richie's strawberry milkshake to the tacky decor of the 24-hour diner they sit in, nobody really notices that, either. The name _Don_ sticks in his head, but he forces other thoughts to trample over it. He doesn't even know a Don. 

******

California is cold. 

Not really. Not at all. 

It's Don that's cold. It's his bed that's cold. It's everything around him, except for the weather. 

He'd wanted to leave Derry since before he could remember. Growing up gay in a town that was anything but progressive, a town that seemed to run solely on hate… Well, it was difficult to say the least. He felt for whatever poor queer kids came before him, because when he came out he was met with vicious backlash but also a small community of kind and accepting teens; and that was in the twenty-first century. The year all those kids went missing was before his time, but Don recognized that for what it was when it remained a tale passed around by kids at school that the adults wouldn't take seriously. It was the town, or whatever the town was built upon. Whatever mean and horrid thing gave life to the unkindness that lived there and filled the lungs and hearts of so many. 

Don shivers and shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. He's walking briskly back toward his apartment; a shitty one-room flat with no air conditioning that was the only thing he could even sort of afford. The broken a/c doesn't bother him too much. He's cold most of the time, anyway. He fights another shiver, pulls his hood up over his head. Someone side-eyes him, but he pays them no mind. It's hot out. He knows it's hot out. But inside he still feels like ice, has since that night. 

Don Hagardy, living dead man. 

It's odd, really. He hasn't felt this way the entire time he's been here. Inexplicably cold, yes. But there were a couple weeks, a couple of sweet, horrible weeks, where he couldn't remember what was missing from the space beside him. _Who_. 

_Don feels free. _

_ It's an odd feeling, one he never truly felt in all the years he'd spent in Derry, that hellhole of a place. It's like the farther he gets from it, the less he can feel it weighing on him. Sometimes he can't recall why he ever hated it so much. He forgets to remember plenty of things about his hometown, but he knows it's not home. _

_ He shot out of there like a bat out of hell, with a single suitcase crammed full of every single one of his belongings he could find. He's unpacking it, now, in the first apartment he found that fit his budget. It's not the most luxurious place, not by a longshot, but he hopes that with some time and decorating it will begin to feel like home. He hangs his small collection of clothes in the closet, and somehow filling it with everything he has makes it look more pathetic than it did empty. He pulls the last shirt out of the case, goes to hang it… and stops. _

_ It's not his. _

_ It's too small, too bright of a purple. It smells like cologne, a brand his nose recognizes and his brain almost remembers. He buries his nose into it, breathes in deep. His eyes water. He hangs the shirt in the closet and closes the door. _

Whoever said ignorance is bliss was wholly correct, Don thinks. His cold fingers fumble with his keys when he reaches the door to his building. He fumbles again when he gets to the door to his flat. He drops the keys. He swears. Picks them up, misses the keyhole a couple times before he manages to get himself inside. He kicks the door shut behind him, pulls the strap of his messenger bag over his head and drops it onto the kitchen counter. It's too small of a space for a table. 

He takes the few items of groceries out of the bag and busies himself with putting them away. He puts the bread in the fridge. He hears a voice in his head, sees an exaggerated eye roll as it says _It'll go stale faster in there, Donny_. He takes the bread out of the fridge. 

_ It's a night like any other night. Don comes home from his new job at the book store around the block. It's a cute little mom and pop shop, family owned and filled with the smell of paper and ink. The shelves are filled with books new, old, and fifth-hand. Some are signed, some have notes taken in the margins. It smells like memories in there, it sounds like time itself. He likes it. It almost feels like somewhere he belongs. _

_ He puts his bag and keys on the kitchen counter, he goes and takes a shower to wash the day off. He falls into his unmade bed and goes to sleep. _

_ But it's not a day like any other day, not really. All the rest of the days since he arrived in California, since he left Derry, have been peaceful in the way you can only be when you've forgotten about something. The easy way you go out to a movie when you don't remember tonight's the deadline for that paper, the smooth, gentle sway of falling asleep when you have a million and one things to do. It's his dreams that remind him, and when he wakes all he can do is let out a strangled cry, tears hot in his eyes and rolling down his face, Adrian's voice still in his ears and images still on the backs of his eyelids. _

_ Images, of taunting homophobes, of Adrian being as unapologetic and fearless as he always was. He was a reporter, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and straight down into his soul. Don liked to joke that he was his very own Lois Lane. Adrian thought that Lois was always the cooler one, anyway. Easy to be brave when you're invincible, isn't it, Superman? _

_ Images, of Adrian being beaten bloody, of him wheezing, fumbling for his inhaler only for it to be kicked away. His own voice, screaming. Words, just noises, Adrian's name. White and red and black splattering his vision, his right eye swelling shut. Scrambling to his feet just as Adrian was tossed over the side of the bridge, the stupid fucking beaver hat catching the air and following him all the way down. Scrambling down the embankment to the edge of the water and… and… the clown. A jaw, unhinging. A bite, taken right out of Adrian's chest. _

Don rubs his hands over his face. He doesn't know what changed. All he knows is that now, Adrian is a gaping, empty hole in his heart. And his brain can't comprehend what took him away. 


	6. the one with the mud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to anyone who's following and who's commented!

Adrian is absolutely miserable. 

Never mind how he's confused, wearing shredded clothes, and alone. He's soaked and he's _cold_, there's a phantom ache in his left armpit, and he slips and falls face-first in the mud when he goes to climb up the embankment so he can reach the bridge. It's dark, the sky is full of stars but missing its moon. He hugs himself tightly, wonders if it would be better or worse if he took off his wet jacket. 

He figured before he even made it up to the bridge that the carnival was gone; he didn't know how much time had passed, but the lack of music and people-noise had more or less confirmed it while he was still lying back there in the shallow water. Still, he feels his heart drop when he sees the empty space that had been bustling with life in his last memories. 

Well, not his _last_ memories, but his last good ones. The smile on the little girl's face when he gave her his prize, the inherent beauty of small-town-Derry, and the taste of cotton candy on Don's lips. 

_ Don. _

Adrian whirls, searches the darkness on the opposite side of the bridge as if there's any chance Don is still standing there - or lying there, beaten and bloody. He starts walking in that direction, then jogging, then running despite his body aching and practically begging him to stop. _Waiting for me, he's thinking. Don is waiting for me at home. _

_ Don has wanted to leave Derry for years, has been saving up. He's been renting out the upstairs of his grandmother's house in the meantime. When she passed away a few years ago, he inherited the house. It's paid off, not precisely new but updated to a reasonable degree. The perfect place to settle down and maybe have a dog or a family, if he wanted to stay in Derry. It was around the time he began renting out the downstairs that Adrian made his way into town chasing a story and needing a place to crash. Adrian moved into Don's house, but he ended up still needing a tenant. _

Adrian is panting, sweating, and somehow still cold when he charges up the front steps of the house and tries to wrench the door open. It's locked. He tries it again, jiggles the doorknob desperately, but of course it doesn't budge. He kicks up the doormat, stretches up onto his tip-toes to feel along the ridge at the top of the doorframe. Don never hides the spare key in the same place twice. It's irritating, some kind of game he likes to play to fuck with Adrian and his complete and total inability to remember his house key. There has also always been a fear, Adrian thinks, that there are people in Derry, in this small, old-fashioned place, who might think up some dastardly deeds to commit if they knew how to easily enter their home. 

Adrian supposes now, caked with dried blood and mud, shivering and missing his inhaler, that he was right to worry. 

He finds the key in the dying potted plant on the left of the doorway, only after accidentally ripping off half the leaves of the one on the right beforehand. He watered them before they left, he remembers. It was late afternoon when they were getting ready to leave for the carnival and he'd slipped his hand out of Don's to backtrack and poke at the dry soil, gently touch the leaves that were still green but wilting slightly in the unrelenting early August sun. _They're thirsty,_ he'd said, _we have to feed our children, Don,_ and Don had gone and gotten him the hose. 

The plants were just watered, right? They shouldn't be that dry, shouldn't be dying so soon. 

He lets himself into the house, leaves his shoes at the door in a feeble attempt to not track dirt all through the house. "Don?" He calls out, switching on the hall light. The rest of the house is dark, quiet. He makes his way upstairs, pops his head into the living room. There's a sheet over the couch and the coffee table. He pauses for a moment, wonders if he's concussed, turns around just to confirm that he actually came up the steps. The furniture downstairs is usually covered, because the downstairs apartment is still vacant. But they _live_ upstairs. "Babe?"

He feels dread growing in his stomach. He runs again, into the bedroom, which is empty, bed made, no dirty clothes in the corner. He opens the closet with shaky hands. All that remains is some of his clothes, none of Don's, and that stupid fucking beaver hat on the shelf. He struggles to take in a breath, wheezes a little. He stumbles to the bedside table, finds his spare inhaler still in the drawer, and takes a puff, _wheeze_, takes another. He fumbles in his jeans pocket, pulls out his cell phone. Some dirty water drips pathetically out of the charging port, and the screen stays black when he presses the home button. It was in his pocket when he hit the water. He's not very surprised. 

Thank God Don never got rid of his grandmother's landline. He flies back down the steps and yanks it out of its cradle, dials a number he knows by heart with trembling fingers and waits while it rings. 

It rings once, twice, three times, four, before there's a click and a cautious, "... Hello?"

"Don!" Adrian wants a little bit to cry, doesn't know what to make of any of this. What happened? Did Don leave Derry, or did he leave _him_? Even with that thought looming over his head, he lets out a quivering, "Don, baby, what's going on? Where are you?" 

There's a heavy silence that drags on for so long Adrian almost repeats himself; that is until he hears Don's shaky inhale. "Adrian?" He breathes. "Is this… Am I going crazy?"

Adrian snorts, lets out a surprised, sardonic laugh. "Well you _did_ pack up all your shit and leave me in Derry, under a _bridge_, so maybe." 

"Adrian," Don says again. He repeats it a few times, sobs and then gasps like it surprised him by falling from his lips. Adrian thinks he drops the phone. There's some fumbling noises as he retrieves it and puts it back to his ear. "Adrian, baby, I'm so sorry, but I-I just don't… Adrian, I _buried_ you." 

Adrian's brow furrows. "Buried me? I…" He rubs at his chest, his side just beneath his armpit where the ache still remains. He thinks… Teeth. Razor sharp, rows and rows of them. The wet sound of tearing flesh loud in his ears, the wet hot slickness of blood, blinding pain. "The clown," he says. 

"Nobody would have believed me," Don whimpers. "I gave my statement to the cops, but I only told them about those fuckers who hit you, a-and threw you off…" he pauses, sniffles. "I just told them about that, because they wouldn't believe me about the clown." 

Adrian sinks down onto the hardwood floor, sits cross-legged and leans his head back against the rippled floral wallpaper. "I thought he was trying to help me." Adrian frowns deeply, remembering the white-gloved hand reaching out and pulling him from the river he'd been just shy of drowning in. He felt gratitude, but only for the moment before he was held in a death grip of a choke hold and eaten alive. "I… Don, what's happening?" 

"I don't know. I don't… But I really miss you, baby." A sob. "I don't… For a while I forgot, Adrian I _forgot_, but then I remembered and I-I don't know how to live without you, I have nightmares every night, I…" His voice cracks and his words stutter to a halt. 

Adrian softens. "Where are you? How long has it been?" 

"Um," It sounds like Don pauses to blow his nose, "I'm in L.A., I've been living here for a few weeks." 

"This town," Adrian says, "I think you were right about it." Don laughs softly, sniffles again, and Adrian smiles. "Can you reserve a plane ticket for me? I need to see you, and I just really think you shouldn't come back here." 

"That town is Hell on Earth. You're not the only person who died or went missing, Adrian. There's something there, something bad." 

Adrian takes a shaky breath, puts his hand in front of his mouth to feel the exhale just to assure himself he's really there. "The plane ticket?" He prompts. He doesn't want to talk about the demons in the town he's still currently in, he just wants to get out of it.

"Next flight to LAX, 8am tomorrow morning." 

"Pick me up from the airport?" 

"I'm never letting you out of my sight again." 

Adrian smiles. There's another hour of tearful whispering over the line, _I love you_s and talk of fate, second chances. Eventually Don's responses become fewer and farther between until only slow, even breathing is coming over the line. Adrian hangs up, drags himself to his feet and stands there for a moment in his stiff, dirty clothes before he makes his way upstairs to wash every dirty, painful, horrible memory down the drain. 

Nothing makes sense right now, other than getting to wherever Don is. And so, he gets ready to go. 

****** 

The Losers leave the diner all hanging off each other. The place doesn't serve alcohol; they're all just milkshake drunk and happy. Richie has an arm slung around Eddie's shoulders, Eddie's got one arm around his waist and the other around Bev's, who's holding onto him and Ben, who's got his arms around Bev and Stan, who's fisting the material of Ben's and Mike's jackets, while the latter alternates between mussing Bill's hair and pulling him back to his side when he, laughing, swats at him and takes a step away. 

Richie is singing _Tainted Love_ as loud as he can, nudging at Eddie, which makes him bounce into Bev, and her into Ben, all the way down the line like dominoes. Bill protests from the opposite end, and Eddie hip checks Richie back, making contact more with his ass than his hip. They walked from the Town House at Stan's suggestion. The fresh air is nice, after being underground and then holed up inside. It's nice, for the first time in so long, to take a walk around Derry and admire it just for what it is; a small town, charming in that way small towns are. There isn't city pollution blocking out the sky with smog, and the stars are bright and beautiful. 

And so the Losers Club of 1989 walks, reunited, down the lit streets of Derry, singing, laughing, holding each other. There was a part of every single one of them that feared they would lose to Pennywise. That after all these years, the lost memories, after everything and giving it their all, that evil thing down in the sewers might still win out in the end. For Bill, that would mean never getting justice for Georgie. For Mike, that would mean wasting his whole life in Derry for nothing. For Stan, that would mean watching the people he gave his life for lose. For Ben, it would mean remembering the only people he never felt alone around and then dying with them. For Bev, it would mean remembering that love isn't supposed to be controlling, not meant to hurt, but losing the opportunity to experience it fully. For Richie, it would mean finding once again the people who made him see life in color and then watching it all bleed away. For Eddie, it would mean dying still afraid, _this_ close to overcoming it. 

By some miracle, they didn't lose. By some crazier, bigger miracle, the Losers they lost along the way were brought back to them. Richie's gaze lingers on Eddie's profile when he joins in on singing _Put Your Head on My Shoulder_ with Bev, on the sharp line of his jaw, the point of his nose, the dark fan of his eyelashes. Eddie catches him looking, graces him with a sweet, private smile, and edges his hand up underneath the hem of Richie's shirt _just_ a little. They all glance at Stan a little too often, much to his chagrin. He sticks his tongue out at them just as often. 

Tonight, they raid the linen closet of the Town House. Tonight, they camp out on the floor of Bill's room. Tonight, they're thirteen again. They watch old slashers on Bill's laptop while laying squished against and a little bit on top of one another, sharing two comforters and lying in a nest of bedding. Eddie falls asleep tucked up under Richie's chin, with Stan in his lap and Bill against his shoulder, Mike's legs over his. Bev is crushed against Richie's side opposite Eddie, Ben sprawled over her thighs like a weighted blanket. 

Tonight, they sleep in a room filled with more pure emotions than Derry has seen in thousands of years, pleasant dreams moving behind their eyelids, warmth in their embrace, and hope for the future gleaming in the darkness like a nightlight. 


	7. the one where they leave derry

The Losers head back to bed pretty soon after returning from dinner in an attempt to get their sleep schedules back on track and be able to actually make use of their last day together in Derry. There aren't any pretenses this time; Eddie slips an arm around Richie's waist on their way up the stairs and they head to Richie's room together. There's a bit of teasing from the other Losers, but nothing too dramatic or unbearable. It makes them feel a little less self-conscious about it; it's no more of a big deal that they're sharing a bed than it is that Ben and Bev are. Really, they should have known that their best friends in the world wouldn't bat an eye at the evolution of their relationship, but of course making your relationship common knowledge is easier said than done when you're still coming to terms with your sexuality. 

Bev lays a hand on each of their shoulders when she passes. Richie flushes and ducks to hide his face behind Eddie, who only lets him hide and shoots Bev a grin. Pink dusts his cheeks, but his dimples are deep. He’s embarrassed, still trying to find comfort in showing parts of himself he’s long kept hidden deep within, but he’s happy. He’s proud. Bev feels her heart swell, ruffles Eddie’s hair and revels in the way his bashful smile turns playful as he returns the favor, then pecks his cheek and chooses to leave Richie be for now. She’ll have all the time in the world to get gooey about it with him later; right now she feels like it might just melt him into a puddle of goo. Ben has already retired to her room, and she pauses outside the door just long enough to glimpse Eddie coaxing Richie out of the crook of his neck to hold his face between his hands, press their noses together, and smile a cheesy smile at him until Richie laughs and captures his lips.

Before she can be caught looking, Bev dances into the room she’s now sharing with Ben, who’s lying languidly across the bed with a hand behind his head, his phone in the other, and a strip of skin exposed where his t-shirt has ridden up, the band of his briefs peeking out from his slouched sweatpants. She takes a moment to admire him, this beautiful man lying in her bed, before he notices her. He lets his phone drop onto the mattress and graces her with a crinkly-eyed smile that transports her straight back to middle school. _Guess Eddie’s not the only one realizing what he’s missed out on_, Bev thinks, returning Ben’s smile as she toes off her sneakers. She feels his eyes follow her as she bends to dig around in her suitcase for her pajamas, and when she straightens and turns to face him again he fumbles for his phone and busies himself scrolling through it, cheeks going red. She tries not to grin as she turns her back to him to pull her shirt over her head. Ben Hanscom, ever the sweet, awkward New Kid.

She still wishes that she’d held onto the post card, the one with the poem he wrote on it. She wishes she’d known sooner that it was him. She wishes she hadn’t moved away, that they hadn’t all forgotten each other for all those years, wishes she’d remembered all those things that happened in the summer of 1989 and how she’d stood up to her father. She wishes she’d never married Tom, wishes the pale strip of skin where her wedding band used to be matched the rest of her, or that they’d come back to each other sooner and it would be her union with Ben creating a tan line on her ring finger. 

She pulls on an old, oversized t-shirt and merely kicks off her pants before she makes her way to the bed. Ben scooches to make room for her, pats the space beside him. He looks sheepish; shy, almost like he’s in disbelief. She fingers the stubble along his jaw before gliding her hand down his chest to his belly, and his eyes flutter closed. There are taut muscles under her hand, but she can feel his nerves. She kisses him, slow, hands traveling from his belly to his face and everywhere in between. His fingers remain loosely woven into her hair, not tugging, just feeling the texture. When they both run out of breath she pulls away, smiles at him. 

Pressing her forehead against his, she says, “Eddie and Richie look happy.”

Ben hums. “It’s about time. When we were kids there were so many times I almost brought it up to Richie.”

“You knew?” 

“You didn’t?” Ben asks, quirking an eyebrow. “I thought you would have guessed.”

“Oh, I had my suspicions,” Bev says, grazing her thumb over his cheekbone, “I just didn’t realize you did.”

Ben rolls his eyes and lets her bounce her fist off his abdomen with only an exaggerated puff of air out his mouth. “Eddie was harder, but Richie? I mean, you know. Hopelessly in love with one of your best friends but too chicken shit to say anything about it? Takes one to know one.”

Bev only smiles, taps her chin thoughtfully. “I sometimes wonder how things might be different. You know, if we didn’t forget.” Ben shuffles her closer, so their bodies are flush. She doesn’t mind. “I think we would have kept in touch. Don’t you?”

“I do,” Ben agrees. His fingers find the dimples in her back on either side of her spine and trace them, making her shiver. “We all promised before we left, and I think we would have kept those promises if It hadn’t made us forget.” Bev merely hums in agreement, letting that hang in the air as Ben’s exploration of her back travels upward beneath her shirt, the warmth of a calloused palm smoothing over her hip, tickling up her spine, spreading over the space between her shoulder blades. “I think Richie and Eddie would have gotten themselves together sooner,” Ben continues, and so do his hands. “Not in Derry, because it was hardly the place, even without It terrorizing people. But somewhere. In college, probably.” Ben surprises her, earns a squeal, when he suddenly flips her onto her back and looms over her, nearly chest-to-chest. He pauses, raises an eyebrow and hovers the hand that isn’t supporting his weight over the pale skin of her tummy where her shirt has ridden up. _Is this okay?_ He’s asking, as if she’s left any room for doubt. Still, she nods, and she’s grateful. Tom never asked if anything was okay. There are many things she would have said no to, given the opportunity. With Ben, she can’t think of very many, but she’s thankful that he takes the time to ask. He lowers himself down to pepper kisses around her belly button. “I like to think it would have worked out sooner for a couple other people, too,” he muses, punctuated with kisses.

“Ah,” Bev sings. She runs her hands over his shoulders, plays with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. “You know, I think it might’ve.”

She wishes it had.

But this… Her eyes flutter closed, her thoughts stuttering as Ben’s touches only grow more pleasurable. Yeah, she’ll take this.

******

The Losers spend the last day before Stan and Bill catch their respective morning flights back to their wives going down memory lane again. It’s much more pleasant this time, now that there isn’t a Demon Murder Clown lurking in the shadows, no secrets or deep dark fears hanging over their heads. And of course, this time they have Stan. Rather, they _know_ that they have Stan. He was there the first time, too, but he doesn’t bother bringing that up no matter how many times something gets repeated for his benefit. He was there, but he still likes to hear them recount it all. They stroll around the streets of Derry, pause at the arcade and the pharmacy and Bill's old house, look up at the looming, dilapidated apartment building where Bev used to live with her father, loiter briefly in the middle school parking lot. They eventually make it out to the Barrens. They sit in the club house, most of them on the dirty wooden floor. Stan and Bev are wearing shower caps, Stan holding the tin can he'd stored them in and chuckling (_For Use of Losers Only_), and Richie has chanced putting his entire body weight in the flimsy old hammock despite Eddie’s warnings.

“Come on, Eds,” he says, grinning and throwing out his arms. The sudden movement makes the wood the hammock is hung from creak ominously, and Eddie makes his big-eyed Danger Face. Still, Richie says, “We used to lay in here together, Eddie. Remember?”

“We were _thirteen_, asshole. I weighed like seventy pounds back then.”

“You were, like, super small. Little chicken legs in those red booty shorts,” Richie says, and raises his arms in front of his face to block Eddie’s smack. “Oh, but _now_, Eds? Oh, now, you’re an absolute _twunk_.”

“Beep, beep, Rich,” Stan says absently, not even looking up from flipping through an old Wonder Woman comic.

“Get a room,” is Bill’s input, and Richie turns on him, looking positively tickled.

“Oh we will, Big Bill, don’t you worry!” There is a collective groan at Richie’s wink, and a blushing Eddie kicks at his ass through the fabric of the hammock and sends him gently swinging, which is apparently all the old thing can take. Richie lets out a shriek as the hooks come out of the rotting wood in the ceiling and he hits the ground with a _thud_. Eddie, ever the worrier, crouches beside him immediately. Richie certainly feigns more boo-boos than he actually obtained, but Eddie’s still digging a wad of tissues out of his pocket to dab at a tiny scrape on his shin, babbling about tetanus while Richie just lies there enjoying the attention.

“Safe to say Richie’s getting over his embarrassment, then,” comments Mike, which makes Ben snicker. He pulls Bev closer to his side with his arm around her shoulders, and Bev thinks there's something very right about this.

They pack a picnic and bring it to the quarry. The summer heat is beginning to fade, but it’s not gone yet. One might think that since they went there with the intention of swimming they might actually bring swimwear, but one would be wrong. They never bothered when they were kids, all splashing around in their tighty whiteys, Bev in a training bra she had bought herself. Why should they start being prepared now?

They play chicken like they used to, play fight, dunk each other, and when they’re tired and water logged they lay themselves out on the rocks and eat, soaking up the sun and laughing.

It’s a simple day, exactly like countless that they spent together when they were kids, and it’s for that very reason that it’s exactly the perfect way to spend the day together. They have money now, could have gone and done something they’ve never before and never could have all those years ago, could have gone out to lunch or shopping or drove a town over to catch a movie since the theater and the arcade in Derry have long since been boarded up. But there’s beauty in the small things. It means something to still have each other now the way they did decades ago, means so much that they can still laugh and play like children and never fear judgement from one another.

They trudge back to the Town House when the late afternoon chill sets in, still soggy, still water logged, and satisfied. It’s not until they’re back inside, freshly showered and gathered around Bill’s laptop for another movie, that they really consider the fact that soon they will all be leaving Derry again.

“Do you think we’ll forget again?”

It’s Ben who asks, frowning and holding Bev’s hand. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles and looks around at the rest of them.

“It’s dead, so its influence should be gone, right?” Bill directs this question at Mike, who only shrugs.

“There’s no way to know for sure. But we won’t let each other forget.”

There’s a short moment of silence while everyone thinks that through. They’re watching the Lost Boys, and there’s some vampire snarling happening on screen that demands some of their attention.

“You’re my family,” Eddie says softly. “My real family, and the only one I have left.” He rakes his fingers through Richie’s hair and looks around at the rest of the Losers. “I have to go back to New York and get things in order there before I can build a new life somewhere else. Don’t let me forget while I’m there. I don’t want to get stuck again.”

Richie, looking up at Eddie from his lap, reaches to touch Eddie’s face, and Eddie glances down at him, flashes an uneasy smile. Richie takes the hand Eddie has buried in his hair, brings it to his lips, kisses a knuckle. “You couldn’t forget about me,” he says, halfway teasing and halfway serious. “And even if you did, I’d be on the next flight to the Big Apple and banging on the door of your posh apartment within the _day_, Kaspbrak.”

"Ben and I will be in the city, too. We can do lunch," Bev offers.

Mike smiles, squeezes Eddie’s shoulder. “We have each other’s phone numbers, we can make a group chat and Skype every day if we have to.”

“As incredibly annoying as a group chat sounds,” Richie says, seeing everyone sideways from his position lying in Eddie’s lap, “I’d rather have my phone constantly blowing up with emojis than forget any of you guys again.”

“Agreed,” a few of them echo, and the rest just smile.

******

In the morning, they see Stan and Bill off in the parking lot. They created the group chat at breakfast, and Richie is already blowing it up before the two departing Losers even leave their sight. Stan and Bill are the first to go, but the rest follow soon after. Mike is heading to Florida, and they all help him pack up the few belongings he actually wants to take with him to a new life before he boards his plane later that very afternoon. Bev and Ben have booked tickets back to New York, and Eddie managed to book the same flight. He did some deliberation before deciding to go with them; after all, he had originally planned to stay away longer than this. But then again, he’d only planned that way because he didn’t know what he was doing or what he wanted, only that he suddenly felt like he was suffocating under his wife’s scrutiny and that there was something he desperately needed to find elsewhere. But Richie’s fingers are tangled with his, a sweaty palm pressed against his own, and he’s telling some stupid joke that makes Bev roll her eyes and Ben softly chuckle, and Eddie knows he’s found it. He has to go home as soon as possible so he can bring that chapter of his life to a close. Hell, tear out the pages and burn them, for all he cares. He’s finished with being the person he was when he married Myra, when he lived with his mother. He’s not afraid, he’s not sick, he doesn’t need protection. He doesn’t even have _asthma_. And anyway, what better time to serve your wife divorce papers than when one of your best friends is filing a restraining order against her husband and having her lawyers inform him of their separation?

Richie wanted to come, be his moral support through it all, but Eddie declined. Somehow he doesn't imagine Richie’s presence would help anything along as far as Myra’s concerned, and either way… This is something he has to do on his own. While he hopes (knows) he’ll always have the Losers backing him up, and Richie especially, he needs to prove to himself and to Myra that he can take care of himself, and take care of things by himself. And so, Richie reluctantly booked a ticket back to L.A. He doesn’t relish the thought of walking into his empty apartment, but there is comfort in Eddie’s promise of following close behind with many of his belongings within the week.

Once Mike is gone and the remaining four Losers have all packed their things into their rental cars, ready to head to the airport, Richie pulls Eddie aside. “There’s something I want to show you,” he says, and Eddie gets in the passenger seat of Richie’s car, and when he gets back out he finds himself being tugged across the Kissing Bridge.

“I carved this when we were thirteen,” Richie says, hands in his pockets and nodding unnecessarily at the initials etched into the wood. Eddie’s eyes are already locked on the carving. He runs his fingers over it in awe, then smiles and looks back at Richie.

“Oh, you had it _bad_,” he teases, and Richie scoffs.

“I was a repressed, closeted homosexual preteen. This shit was my only outlet.”

They take the drive back to the Town House to pick up Eddie’s car slow, zig-zagging through familiar streets.

“You think we’ll ever come back here?” Eddie asks at one point.

Richie shrugs. “Dunno. But honestly? I could do without.”

Eddie nods. He could do without, too. So long as he gets to keep his family, he doesn’t care about ever coming back. 


	8. the one with the letter and life-fixing

It's only a few days after the Losers leave Derry - Bill and Richie to L.A., Eddie, Bev, and Ben to New York, Mike to Florida, Stan to Georgia - that six of the Losers receive something in the mail. 

On a group Skype call, Stan rubs at his temples while Richie reads his letter out loud and the rest of them complain and otherwise make a big deal out of it. 

"It's a sweet sentiment," Bev says, frowning and skimming through the letter again. "I mean, I hate it, but." She shrugs and lets that hang in the air. 

"It's morbid and stupid?" Mike supplies, and Bev shoots him finger guns. 

"What glitch in the matrix made it so that my death certificate never existed, but still let _that_ get sent out?" Stan groans, smearing his hand over his face. Apparently there's a cosmic deity of some sort that has a sense of humor. 

"What brain-eating parasite ever convinced you that killing yourself would help defeat Pennywise?" Richie raises. His computer is set up on his counter, stomach level, and he leans down so his face is in the frame and waves a spatula at the camera. 

"Beep beep, Richie," Bill says, chuckling good-naturedly. 

"The real question is," begins Eddie, slurping up a noodle and clicking his chopsticks together, "Who begins their suicide note with _this isn't a suicide note_?" 

There's a garbled snort over the Skype call that Stan thinks comes from Ben, although he can't be certain. Richie is hollering, can be seen dancing in his little square on the screen as he flips the sandwich he's grilling. Stan opens his mouth to retort, but hears a giggle from behind him and instead turns on Patty. "Whose side are you _on_?" He says, exasperated. "Did in good times and hard times mean nothing to you?"

Patty sobers, leans over the back of the sofa to sling her arms around his shoulders. "Did till death do us part mean anything to _you_?" 

There's a chorus of _ohhhhh!_ from Stan's laptop, and he tries in vain to avoid Patty's sloppy kiss to his cheek. "Ha-ha," he deadpans. On some level he thinks it's incredibly morbid to be joking about it like this, but on the other hand… Well, you can laugh or you can cry, and at least he has the option to laugh. "I killed myself that one time. Can you guys please just burn those letters or something?"

*****

Later that night, Stan lays in bed with his reading glasses perched at the end of his nose, his bedside lamp on as he holds the thick hardcover of the first in the _Mr. Mercedes_ series. He's still at the beginning. The author is very long-winded, which was what kept him from really starting the series before. But it had always been on his list and, well, if literally getting a second chance at life doesn't jumpstart you on getting done all the things you've been putting off, what will?

He marks his page with the cover flap and places the book face-up on his nightstand when Patty comes out from the bathroom. She's wearing a purple cotton pajama set, a strap of the tank falling off her shoulder and the too-big bottoms hanging low on her hips and swallowing her whole. He opens his arms and she crawls across the bed to settle against his chest. He rests his chin on her head, wraps his arms tightly around her. She nuzzles into him, leans up to place a kiss to the underside of his jaw.

"I'm glad I don't remember," she says softly. Stan stiffens briefly, then runs his fingers up her spine and traces a small heart over her shoulder blade. "I can laugh about it the way it is now, but…" she pauses, he traces another heart. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Stanley," she whispers. 

"You don't have to find out." Stan feels a weight in his chest, a guilt for ever taking the coward's way out. There's a version of Patty - maybe not this one, thank God not this one, but she exists - that found him lying pale and lifeless in the bathtub in water dyed red with the color drained from his skin. "I'm not going anywhere."

"You'd better not." 

"We're trying for a baby. That's, like, the opposite."

He feels Patty's smile against his throat where she presses a kiss. She kisses him breathless and senseless and then proceeds to tire him out so completely that he falls asleep pillowed by her stomach with his shirt in some unknown corner of the room. He dreams of baby sea turtles. They hatch and call him daddy. Somehow, not the weirdest dream he’s had the past couple weeks. 

*****

Breaking up with Myra is painful, although not precisely in the ways Eddie expected. He expected rage, he expected her to throw things, shred the divorce papers (which was why he brought two copies of everything), try to take his suitcase out of his hands. After all, she had tried with everything in her to keep him from leaving for Derry. She’d frozen his credit cards, for fuck sake. But it doesn’t happen like that, not this time.

What Myra does is cry. From the moment he walks in and doesn’t kiss her cheek to the moment he drags the last full suitcase out the front door, she’s crying. She wails when he puts the divorce papers in front of her, and he tries to speak over her but still doesn’t know if she can even hear him over her own banshee screams. She puts her head in her hands when he tells her that he hasn’t been happy for a long time, and he doesn’t think she has, either. She spills her mug of green tea all over herself and the kitchen table when he says she deserves someone who can love her like a man should love his wife, shrieks at the heat of the tea and shrieks when he hands her a towel to clean herself up. She even calls him later that night, when he’s holed up in a hotel room eating pizza by himself, to weep some more over the phone.

And he listens to all of it. The least he could do, he supposes. Their relationship has never been healthy, and they’ve never been happy, but he doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he’s just a victim. He proposed, he went through with the marriage. They both chose to stay together in a loveless marriage, and the least he can do is leave her their apartment and furniture and spend a few minutes listening to her cry while she watches their wedding tape. (He has never watched their wedding tape, but he imagines it's a trip and a half.) 

"You shouldn't give her that, Eds," Richie says over FaceTime that night. He's eating dinner, which seems to be a reheated slab of lasagna from his freezer (something Eddie learns soon after moving in with Richie is that he's a meal prepper; not for health or nutrition reasons, but for the convenience of pulling dinner out of the freezer and throwing it in the microwave for a few minutes). 

"I just feel bad, is all," Eddie says. He's laying in bed flipping idly through the channels on the muted television in his hotel room. He pauses on an infomercial for a pressure cooker, then moves on to a rerun of _Friends_. 

"You don't have to, though," Richie says around a bite of lasagna. They've been over this a few times by now; Richie thinks honesty is the best thing Eddie can give Myra, but Eddie feels guilty that they wasted so much time together. She wasn't the best wife, never the most emotionally supportive, but he always knew she cared. Richie anticipates Eddie's explanation, swallows his food, and smiles. There's something stuck in his teeth. "You don't have to, but you do, because you're a good person. And I love that about you. Just don't let her guilt you into anything. You're giving her more than enough."

*****

Bev has ignored many many calls from Tom. She was clear in her request that everything go through their lawyers, and she's certain her lawyer illustrated that point effectively. But Tom is Tom, and a manipulator is going to try to manipulate. She deletes his voicemails without listening to them; she knows how mean he gets when she makes a small mistake or dares talk to a man on the street or in the grocery store, she doesn't want to hear what he has to say about her leaving him and moving in with another man. 

Ben lives in a house of his own design in a quiet area of upstate New York, with an impressive chunk of property surrounding the house itself. He also has an apartment in the city for business purposes, which is where they're staying now while Bev deals with her divorce proceedings. It's modest, but nice. The furniture is all plain and black, there's a large painting of a wooded area at sunset hung in the living room. The kitchen is but a small nook, as is the bathroom. 

They offered the couch to Eddie, but he declined in favor of a hotel room where he didn't have to share a bathroom. Bev suspects, from his wink when Ben turned his back, that he really just doesn't want to get in the middle of anything. To be fair, he's not totally off base, but they could have controlled themselves for a guest's sake. They're not animals, after all. 

Animals don't give moan-worthy massages with scented body lotion. 

*****

Mike has a house.

An actual _house_.

It should have taken him a lot longer to settle in in Florida after leaving Derry, but in truth he's had a real estate agent scoping out available places in the area for years, he just hadn't been ready to leave yet. 

Now, he's finished with Derry. Pennywise is gone, no more kids are going to die. The evil that lived there has been extinguished, and he no longer feels responsible. His self-appointed duty to stay and be the harbinger of doom once their twenty-seven year reprieve was over has finished. Now, he's just a man with a whole lot of life left to live. 

The house he bought has been on the market for a couple years. He's had his eye on it, his agent has been dangling it over him like a carrot over a bunny, prodding him and being so charmingly insistent on that way of hers. Her name is Lola, and she's one of the most outgoing and energetic people he's ever met. She gives Richie a run for his money, which is terrifying in and of itself. But beyond that, she's also an incredibly beautiful woman. 

She's sitting with him now, on the back deck, looking out at the sunset with a glass of wine in hand. She's going on and on about how gorgeous the one-level open-concept is, the marble countertops, and _God_, the arched doorways! 

"So," she says when she's finished listing off all her best selling points, "What finally convinced you to leave that town way back in the middle of nowhere Maine?" She swirls her wine in her glass and smiles up at him through her eyelashes, looking almost conspiratorial. "Romantic drama? Murder? Boredom-induced brain degeneration? Oh, _do_ tell, Micheal."

Mike laughs, shakes his head and takes a sip of wine. He leans back in his seat, lets her perch on the arm of it. "I guess you could say I finally finished my unfinished business there, and I left with my best friends in the whole world."

"And where are they now?" Lola asks. "Why are you drinking wine with your real estate agent if you've got best friends in the _whole_ entire world?" She tweaks his nose, and he crinkles it and swats her hand away. 

"A couple of them are in L.A., a few in New York, one in Georgia. They all had lives to get back to, I have one to start. We'll see each other soon. After all, they have to see this _fabulous_ house you sold me,"

Lola sinks down, snakes an arm around Mike's neck and breathes his air. "It really is a fabulous house," she says, lips ghosting the hollow beneath his ear. "Don't mock me." 

"I would _never_!"

Lola is about to argue, but Mike decides that while he's trying new things, he may as well try this. He kisses her once, at the corner of her mouth, pauses a centimeter away to gauge her reaction. "Finally," she mutters, and pulls him back into the kiss by the collar of his shirt. 

It really is a gorgeous house. There may be ulterior motives as far as staying in touch with Lola goes, but she really is good at her job.

******

Bill is working on his endings. 

Really, he is. He's working on his endings, and he's working on his marriage. He's comforted by the fact that he's not the only Loser to have trouble as far as spouses go, and he's definitely thankful that the things that are wrong are things he can actually work on. Communication isn't something that's very easy to be good at, but it certainly has its benefits. 

He sits on his sofa, one of Audra's feet in his lap and the other in his hands, thumbs working over the sole while she lies against a throw pillow, picking at a loose string and telling him about her day. The life of an actress is less spectacular than one might think, but tonight she has a funny story about being doused with a lot of fake blood which was _actually_ just a lot of lube with food coloring in it. She's stained a little bit pink where it sat on her skin too long. 

"My bad, shouldn't have written in the blood bath scene," Bill jokes, placing her right foot into his lap to pick up the left. "You're killing it though, you really are." 

Audra doesn't reply for a long moment, and the silence stretches on long enough that Bill glances toward her. She's only watching him, a soft look on her face. She wraps the pillow's loose thread around her finger until the lack of circulation makes it turn red, then releases it. Bill raises an eyebrow at her, pausing his work on her foot. What?"

Audra wiggles her toes and whines in protest. Only after Bill resumes his ministrations does she say, "Nothing. It's just… Thanks for listening." She smiles a small, sweet smile, and it makes his heart feel warm.

"This is pretty nice, isn't it?" He says, smiling and moving his hands up to her calf. "I think it's been a long time since we really sat together and talked, and I'm sorry about that."

Audra's gaze softens impossibly more, and she reaches down to catch Bill's hand. "The bridge goes both ways," she says, and it's the first time in a long time that they've agreed on much of anything. 

They fall asleep on the couch together that night, watching Audra's favorite show that she's been trying to get him into for over a year. He never agreed to watch it before because he somehow thought that it wouldn't be his thing, and he was busy writing, but it's actually really interesting. He should have known that, though. Audra has good taste. They wake up in the middle of the night stiff and uncomfortable, and blame each other for their predicament all the way up to the bedroom. But for once, neither of them is really mad. They fall into bed together, and it's the first time in some months that Bill hasn't fallen asleep with his laptop in one of the spare bedrooms. Audra runs warm, like a little space heater. He relishes the warmth at his side. 


	9. the one with the pet shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time since I updated, sorry for anyone who's following! The holidays were really busy and a new semester started, so rah rah. I'm trying to get back into the writing mindset.

Living with Eddie is good, Richie thinks. Good in more ways than one. Good because the bathroom gets cleaned more often, because he has someone to eat meals with, because he wakes up with Eddie pressed against his back with an arm draped over his middle. He wakes to the smell of coffee some days, which doesn't nearly make up for Eddie being missing from the bed, but it certainly helps. 

He was expecting Eddie at any time, but it had been a surprise when there was a knock at his door at eleven in the evening when Eddie'd told him he was going to bed a few hours prior. That little shit was a _liar_, but he was a gorgeous liar, and that shit eating grin and those dimples were the best thing he'd ever seen. 

His insistence on redecorating was practically a given. His first observation upon entering the apartment with not much by way of furniture or decor and off-white walls that Richie had never felt the need to paint was _That couch doesn't even fit in the living room, Richie. And these **walls**! _

The first order of business was moving everything to the center of the space and choosing the somewhat surprising shade of orange called Peach Sorbet for the walls. Richie personally liked Baby Carrot, if only for the name. Eddie's next accomplishment was rearranging the living room; Richie had expected him to just rid the apartment of the big leather couch entirely. Instead, he pressed it up against the wall the television had been on a stand in front of and mounted the TV on the opposite wall, which would have been too short for the TV stand to not stick out into the bathroom doorway. _And that, Mr. Tozier_, Eddie said, proudly planting his hands on his hips, _is how you make use of space._

Richie's given him free reign, curious to see what he'd come up with but also eager to see him make this place home. Eddie slowly starts bringing in new pieces of furniture - a hall tree to store shoes and hang coats and keys, a small kitchen table - and various wall decor and knick knacks. His theme is orange, white, and gold, and it's really all coming together nicely, if a bit creamsicle-y.

Another new addition to the apartment is a 40-gallon terrarium filled with various hides and decor, with a strategically placed vine to hide the wire connecting the probe suction cupped to the bottom of the tank to the thermostat hanging from a nail in the wall. 

_ "Can we go in there?" _

__

__

_Richie stifles a laugh and instead raises an eyebrow at Eddie, who's practically got his nose smooshed up against the window of the hole-in-the-wall pet shop two blocks from the apartment._

_ They're just out for a stroll, no real destination in mind. Eddie is still looking for full-time work in L.A. and Richie has no shows scheduled any time soon - has only just started trying to write his own material again - and so the days are very much their own, filled with sending pictures to the group chat, decorating, learning new recipes. As it turns out, Eddie's cooking skills are base-level at best. He's very good at chopping and stirring and making smoothies, but it's Richie who can manage a stove with all four burners in use and a roast in the oven. His method of measurement tends to be just pouring until his sixth sense thinks it's good enough, which makes Eddie throw his hands up and rant about how he bought that set of measuring cups for a reason, but at the end of the day Eddie has to admit that Richie's got him beat in the kitchen._

_Richie opens the door to the pet shop with a flourish and waves Eddie in ahead of him. He's been here many times over the past few years, likes to browse and see who's been adopted and who's a new arrival. He's gotten to know the owners over that time. It's more of a rescue than anything else, far different from the big name chain pet stores. Chris and Ian get most of their animals from people who don't want them or can't care for them anymore, and the rest come from small local breeders. They sell a lot of supplies, too, since people coming in for stuff like dog food and pee pads makes up most of their revenue between adoptions; but rehoming orphaned animals is why they really opened the shop._

_Richie loves this place. They use the feather-on-a-stick toys to play with the cats, pet the old German Shepherd lying by the door in a patch of sunlight shining through the window. He belongs to Chris and Ian, a resident of the shop for so long that they adopted him themselves._

_Richie heads toward the counter while Eddie drifts father into the store, his eye apparently drawn by some movement in one of the glass enclosures on the back wall. Directly in front of the counter is the bunny pen, and Richie quickly spots a particular individual, a mostly red-brown furball save for a blotch of black on his butt, right above the cotton ball tail. The rest scatter when he reaches his hand in the pen, but it allows him to pick it up. _

_"Stefon's still here?" Richie asks as he settles the rabbit into his arms, letting him first sniff his shirt and then place his front paws against his chest to lean up and sniff at his face. _

_"People don't adopt bunnies often," Ian replies, feet kicked up on the counter. He has a clipboard in his lap and is scribbling something down onto the paper on it. "And I've been telling you for months, Richie, just take the damn thing home with you. You've named him, for Christ's sake."_

_ Richie rolls his eyes, clucks his tongue, and scratches gently between Stefon's ears. He leisurely makes his way over to where Eddie is standing in the reptile section, turning a clay hide over in his hands and testing the weight. _

_"Who's this?" Eddie asks, nodding toward the ball of fur Richie's cradling in one arm and petting with the other hand. He offers his hand for the bunny to sniff and then gently traces one of its ears._

_"This is Stefon," Richie says, "I visit him sometimes. Ian says he's my rabbit but my history of not adopting him kind of contradicts that." _

_Eddie puts down the hide he's holding and picks up a heat mat, reads the label. "Why haven't you?"_

_ "Adopted him?" Richie shrugs. "I dunno. I guess I might have if I worked a different job. When I go on tour sometimes I'm away for a month or longer. It's just easier not to have a pet to worry about getting fed."_

_"Well," Eddie says, "I'm there now." He smiles coyly and backs slowly up toward the wall of glass enclosures. _

_Richie adjusts Stefon in his arm and shoots Eddie a look. "Devious is an interesting look on you, Eds," _

_"Hear me out," Eddie begins, leading Richie toward the middle of the back wall. "I never had pets growing up because of my mom. Allergies and bites all sorts of diseases and whatnot." He pauses facing Richie, reaches out to run a finger down the bunny's back. "I think you should get the rabbit. I think you want to, and I'll be there to take care of him when you're not."_

_ "Aw, you mean you're not going to follow me to the ends of the Earth?"_

_ Eddie rolls his eyes. "I have to get a job at some point, Rich. I think having pets could be fun."_

_"Pets," Richie says, raising an eyebrow and fighting the smile trying to lift the corners of his lips. "Plural?" _

_"Hear me out!" Eddie says again. He turns, gesturing for Richie to come closer, and points out the small creature in the tank directly in front of them. The label is written on the glass in pink marker, indicating the sex of the animal. It's a leopard gecko, reported to be approximately two years old, with a plump tail and vertical pupils. She is mostly orange, with smatterings of yellow on her tail, and black spots splattered across her tail. She moves to the water dish in the front corner of the enclosure and takes a drink, and Eddie turns to Richie with wide eyes. "She's gorgeous," he croons. _

_Richie lifts Stefon so he can look him in the eye. "What do you think, bud? Is Eddie Kaspbrak a mad man?" _

Richie is many things, stubborn sometimes, often even, but it didn't take a lot of convincing on Eddie's part to get him on board with bringing a couple new residents into the apartment. Ian had a smug look on his face the entire time he was ringing them up, and Eddie was grinning from ear to ear even as he lugged the tank out to the car and filled the trunk with a few hundred dollars worth of supplies. He'd been a _little_ squicked at the knowledge that he would have to keep live insects in his home indefinitely, but not enough to change his mind. 

Now, Richie's seated on the floor in front of the sofa, his laptop on the coffee table in front of him. The document displayed on the screen is two pages long and he's already hit a wall. He runs his hand through his hair and sighs, reaching for the TV remote. His butt is numb, and he knows the couch would be a thousand times more comfortable than the floor. But Stefon is splayed on the floor beside him, close enough that he can feel his fur brushing up against his leg as he breathes, and he'd hate to wake the fluff ball. 

There are a lot of baby gates set up around the apartment now, because after some discussion and being assured by Ian that yes, rabbits can be litter box trained, he and Eddie had thought it best that Stefon be a free-roam bunny. He was mostly confined to the living room and bedroom, since it was easiest to keep him away from the dangers of the kitchen and bathroom entirely, but everything within reach had to be bunny-proofed. Cords hidden or blocked off so they couldn't be chewed, that kind of thing. It was easier than it sounded, and Eddie managed to find some baby gates that didn't look super baby gate-ish so it didn't ruin the aesthetic he had going on. 

The leopard gecko now lives on top of their shared dresser in the bedroom, since that was the only place the tank would really fit. Ian had told them that a 20-gallon tank was the accepted minimum size for a leopard gecko, but Eddie, true to character, wanted to exceed expectations. Only the best for his baby, of course. Richie was the one to suggest Baby Carrot as the name, and though Eddie had initially rolled his eyes and said _We can do better than that_, it stuck. It's now often shortened to an affectionate croon of _Baby_ from Eddie whenever he handles her, feeds her, or walks by the enclosure.

"Hi, Baby," Eddie says now, sweetly, before emerging from the bedroom. He's still pulling on a t-shirt, his hair damp and a pair of Richie's sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

"Hi, honey," Richie responds dryly. Eddie has never once called Richie baby, but he remains a bit miffed that the animals in the house get the majority of the pet names.

"Wasn't talking to you, shithead," Eddie says, but even as he does he's climbing onto the couch behind Richie, legs on either side of him, and slinging his arms around Richie's middle. He rests his bony chin on Richie's left shoulder. "How's it comin', Rich?"

Richie sighs. "Honestly? Like shit. Trying to write my own material just reminds me of why I sold out in the first place - it's way fuckin' easier to play the asshole character everyone expects out of the straight, white, male comedian."

Eddie hums, tightening his hold. "You may be an asshole," he says, "But I'm pretty sure you're not straight." He turns his face into the crook of Richie's neck and places a kiss there, making him sigh contentedly despite himself. "And," Eddie continues, hand sneaking under Richie's shirt, "I'm positive you don't have to be what the audience expects and the executives think you should be. Surprise them, Rich. Blow them away."

The tension goes out of Richie's shoulders. He's still in writer's block and he's still not sure he's even funny enough to write his own show, but Eddie thinks he can do it. And to him, Eddie's faith is the most valuable thing in the world.

"I'm sorry," Richie says, pushing away his computer and turning so he can almost look Eddie in the eye, "Did you say something about _blowing_?"


End file.
